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The lack of appropriate therapeutic resources for adoptive children and their adoptive families who seek treatment is a national problem. The mental health community has failed to recognize the specific knowledge and expertise that therapists must have if they are to help this population. This article describes the initiative taken by one organization to attack this problem in its state.
Adequate preparation can help assure the success of adoptive placements for special-needs children. One successful method calls for the development of a life book, chronicling the movement of the child through the five stages that will prepare him or her for adoption.
While an extensive body of knowledge on adolescent sexual behavior and outcome has developed, current sociological and psychological studies of adolescents who place their babies for adoption are scant, often with inconclusive results. The level of family of origin functioning of adolescent parents and placers is even less frequently studied. This cross-sectional study of 84 adolescents attending an alternative high school for pregnant girls who recently made a placement or parenting decision assesses the family environment of teenagers in order to provide a broader understanding of these characteristics, which would assist practitioners in provision of services to this population. Using FACES II as the measure of family cohesion and adaptability, it was hypothesized that: (1) adolescent parents or placers would describe their families as being less functional than adolescent norms, (2) adolescents who placed their children for adoption would describe their families as being more functional than adolescents who parented their children, and (3) adolescents from the more functional families would report greater satisfaction with the placement decision than those from less functional families. Results indicate that Hypothesis 1 was supported, but contrary to Hypothesis 2, there were no significant differences in family functioning between placers and parents. Also, when comparing the discrepancy between adolescents' current and ideal family descriptions, no between-group differences were found. Because the vast majority of the respondents were satisfied with their placement or parenting decision, Hypothesis 3 also was not supported. Research needs and practice applications stemming from this study are discussed.
The adoption of babies from third-world countries with endemic scabies by European and North American families is an ever increasing phenomenon. A brazilian baby was presented with papulopustules on both cheeks and an itchy, papular rash that developed four weeks upon arrival in Germany. Meanwhile the adoptive mother had contracted scabies.
Editor's Note: The study reported here is of necessarily limited scope and design because of the realistically small number of adoptions with families containing adolescents that are available for examination. The findings and conclusions of the authors are nonetheless useful for agencies involved in special-needs adoption.
Medicine's recent advance in aiding reproduction, "adoptive pregnancy," is spawning a host of legal, ethical, and policy questions. Policies developed to cope with problems that have arisen in more traditional adoptions, including "the right to know" and access to genetic information, may provide a starting point for finding answers to some of the new dilemmas.
Critical factors in the adoption of hard-to-place youths were analyzed from a sample of 78 children and adolescents placed with adoptive families between 1974 and 1982. Tabular materials and statistical data are available to interested readers on request to the senior author.
Family influences on vocational interest development were studied by hypothesizing that parents with similar interests are more likely to have adolescents who also develop those interests than are parents whose interests are very divergent. In order to unconfound genetic and environmental influences, the 844 parents and adolescent children in 114 biologically related and 101 adoptive families completed the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory. Parent-child interest difference scores were regressed on parent-parent difference scores (PPDIF), a dummy variable for family type, and the interaction between family type and PPDIF. For all parent-child pairs except mother-son, greater PPDIF scores predicted greater parent-child difference scores (indicating influence of family environment), and there was no family type X PPDIF interaction (indicating that the environmental influence was operating in both biological and adoptive families). Evidence of genetic variance in interest sytyes was also confirmed.
"Risk adoption" has received extremely little attention in the literature. The issues raised in this article must be more thoroughly researched before the method is advanced further by the service community. To proceed in the direction of use of "risk adoption" without necessary research regarding potential ramifications may invite difficulties in the future.
A comparison of the effectiveness of the group model with the individual method for adoption studies reveals that the group method had a greater success in permanent placement and used adoption staff members' time most efficiently.
The results are described of a retrospective study, per questionnaire among parents who adopted children from developing countries. Results are given of 228 children. Approximately 100 gastro-intestinal, 80 upper respiratory (nose-, ear- and throat-)diseases and 50 dermatologic problems were diagnosed. We further studied the state of nutrition and the medical information which the parents received from the country of origin. 30-40% of the children arrived malnourished and the catch-up growth was determined after a stay of at least 6 months in the Netherlands. Suggestions are made for a general medical examination of adopted children from the developing countries.
This study showed that nonsearchers and searchers are different from each other on almost every measure that was applied. Research on and experience with searching adult adoptees should not be applied to nonsearching adult adoptees. Likewise, research on and experience with nonsearching adult adoptees should not be generalized to searchers . The results of this study do not support the belief that adoptees, in general, have low self-concepts and identity conflicts, or that adoptees need information about their biological families and reunions to resolve their identity conflicts. Although the sample of pre- and post-reunion searchers was small, reunions did not make a significant difference in self-concept or identity conflicts, as measured by the TSCS . The results of this study do not support the theoretical bases often cited to justify open records. Specifically, adult adoptees in this study do not have negative self-concepts, did not experience poor adoptor - adoptee relationships, and the majority did not experience revelation of adoptive status as disruptive or late. Although significant differences exist between the comparison groups, an important finding is that of all the adult adoptees, the majority scored above the sixtieth percentile on the TSCS and had positive scores on the Attitude Toward Parents Scales. Furthermore, they were happy growing up, with only 12% reporting being unhappy. These findings support the conclusions of Day [1979] and Norvell and Guy [1977] as well as the belief that adoption is a legitimate way of building families.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Induced lactation is breast-feeding without prior pregnancy. Preparation includes breast and nipple stimulation, supplementing the maternal diet, and occasional use of hormones. Infants younger than 8 weeks are more willing to nurse than infants older than 8 weeks. Previous lactation experience is related to increased likelihood of milk production, decreased need for supplemental fluids, and duration of breast-feeding. Tandem nursing an older biological infant and the adoptive infant does not guarantee an increase in milk production sufficient to meet the adoptive infant's needs. Three fourths of the women who took part in this questionnaire survey evaluated this experience positively, regardless of infant age at weaning or need for supplemental fluids. Most respondents stressed the maternal-infant relationship and its enhancement through breast-feeding, rather than milk production, as the reason for attempting induced lactation.
Empirical studies on the psychopathology of adoptees are summarized and discussed with regard to the possibility of a relationship between adoption and psychic disturbances. The results leave the question open as to whether adoptees are more prone to psychic disturbances than other individuals. Those under treatment do not seem to be more severely disturbed than others. Whereas however the adoptees display more disturbances in their social behavior rather than neurotic disturbances, the relationsship is reversed in the population of the non-dopted. The causes seem to lie in the conditions in early childhood and in the experience of being adopted itself.
Adoptive immunogene therapy of cancer is not widely studied, although it has been proposed as a promising strategy for cancer gene therapy. One of the major obstacles to this approach is the difficulty in introducing cytokine genes efficiently into T lymphocytes. In this report, we developed an adoptive immunotherapy model with murine tumor-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes. By using an adenoviral vector, we achieved up to 100% gene transduction of murine T lymphocytes. Treatment of mice with the cytotoxic T lymphocytes genetically modified to produce interleukin 2 resulted in reduction of tumor metastasis and longer survival from intracerebral tumor death, providing a hopeful strategy for treatments of human cancers.
The adoptive transfer of T cells specific for antigens encoded by pathogens and tumors has been an effective treatment for infections and malignancies in animal models and is potentially applicable for infections occurring in immunodeficient bone marrow transplant recipients. This article reviews recent insights derived from studies of the immunobiology of human cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection in healthy and immunodeficient hosts and the development of adoptive immunotherapy as prophylaxis for CMV infection in recipients of allogeneic bone marrow transplants.
The adoptive immunotherapy of cancer with sensitized T lymphocytes is well documented in several animal models. These studies indicate the existence of precursor lymphocytes, in the tumour-bearing animals, which can acquire therapeutic efficacy after in vitro manipulations. To generate immune effector cells, these precursor lymphocytes have to be antigenically stimulated in vitro by the tumour of origin. Using the weakly immunogenic MCA 205 and MCA 203 murine sarcomas, we demonstrate here that this in vitro antigenic stimulation can be achieved by sequential activation with anti-T-cell receptor (TCR) monoclonal antibody and interleukin-2 (IL-2). The culture of tumour-draining lymph node (TDLN) cells with anti-TCR/IL-2 resulted in an up to eightfold increase in cell numbers. The adoptive transfer of these activated cells mediated a significant reduction of 3-day established pulmonary metastases. Although this antibody could activate all of the TCR alpha beta-bearing T cells non-specifically, the therapeutic efficacy mediated by anti-TCR/IL-2-activated cells was tumour specific. Treatment of MCA 205 advanced pulmonary metastases resulted in prolongation of survival, and 30% of treated mice were tumour free for more than 90 days. These tumour-free mice rejected a challenge of MCA 205 but not MCA 203, indicating the development of long-lasting systemic tumour immunity. In spite of their in vivo anti-tumour efficacy, the anti-TCR/IL-2-activated TDLN cells did not exhibit detectable in vitro cytotoxicity. These results demonstrate that this activation method could be an alternative way to generating potent anti-tumour effector T cells.
At first the development of the mother-child-attachment is discussed on the basis of the theories of Bowlby and Ainsworth. A study by one of the Dutch authors (Juffer) is described, in which the quality of the attachment was assessed in 90 foreign adoptions and in which a positive impact of interventions (booklet, discussion of videotapes) on the quality of the attachment was found. Then the relationship between adoptees and their biological parents is discussed. The consequences of the "double parenthood" for the identity development of adopted children is described.