Arizona State University, United States.
University of California, Los Angeles, United States.
Child Abuse Negl. 2022 Aug;130(Pt 2):105031. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105031. Epub 2021 Mar 20.
Children adopted from foster care are at heightened risk for emotional and behavioral challenges, potentially due to early trauma exposure and related risk factors. Research has demonstrated that adoptees with greater pre-adoptive risk exhibit higher rates of internalizing and externalizing problems across childhood and into adulthood. However, these studies have been limited by their use of individual risk factors or sum scores of cumulative risk and their measurement of internalizing and externalizing behaviors separately.
The current study aimed to examine effects of pre-adoptive risk on long-term functioning in children adopted from foster care.
In a longitudinally-followed sample of 82 adoptees, we utilized latent growth curve modeling to examine effects of two latent indices of pre-adoptive risk, postnatal (i.e., trauma-related) risk and prenatal risk (not including prenatal substance exposure, since it was nearly ubiquitous in this sample), on adoptee internalizing, externalizing, and latent scores of dysregulation across childhood. Additionally, in three separate models, we tested whether baseline levels and change across childhood in internalizing, externalizing, and dysregulation mediated effects of prenatal and postnatal risk on adolescent/young-adult functioning.
Greater postnatal risk, but not prenatal risk, predicted higher levels of internalizing and dysregulation across childhood. However, only dysregulation mediated the effect of postnatal risk on adolescent/young-adult functioning.
These results are consistent with prior research evidencing long-term effects of postnatal pre-adoptive risk, but not prenatal risk, in adoptees. Furthermore, they suggest that trauma exposure in this population may result in a profile of broad dysregulation that increases risk for maladjustment into adulthood.
从寄养家庭收养的儿童面临更高的情绪和行为挑战风险，这可能是由于早期创伤暴露和相关风险因素。研究表明，具有更高的预收养风险的被收养者在整个儿童期和成年期表现出更高的内化和外化问题发生率。然而，这些研究受到其使用个体风险因素或累积风险的总和评分以及分别测量内化和外化行为的限制。
本研究旨在检查预收养风险对从寄养家庭收养的儿童的长期功能的影响。
在一个纵向随访的 82 名收养者样本中，我们利用潜在增长曲线模型来研究两个预收养风险的潜在指标，即产后（即与创伤相关的）风险和产前风险（不包括产前物质暴露，因为在这个样本中几乎普遍存在）对收养者在儿童期内化、外化和失调的潜在分数的影响。此外，在三个单独的模型中，我们测试了内化、外化和失调的基线水平和儿童期的变化是否中介了产前和产后风险对青少年/青年期功能的影响。
较高的产后风险，而不是产前风险，预测了儿童期内化和失调的更高水平。然而，只有失调中介了产后风险对青少年/青年期功能的影响。
这些结果与先前的研究一致，证明了产后预收养风险的长期影响，但不是产前风险，在被收养者中。此外，它们表明，在该人群中，创伤暴露可能导致广泛失调的模式，增加成年后适应不良的风险。
