Abstract: | In an investigation of adopted children admitted to residential, psychiatric care over a five year period it was found that the percentage of adoptees far outnumbered their proportion in the general population. Clinical variables related to adoption were analyzed and early deprivation in the child and family pathology were found to be major factors in many cases. It was suggested that these findings should not discredit adoption as such, but rather that they pointed out areas to which attention could be directed, namely, more careful selection of adoptive parents together with post adoptive counselling and follow-up for the adoptive families. |