Here ya go. Tear this apart.
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patric ...@bigpond.com.au (Dian)
http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/abstract/108/2/e30 PEDIATRICS Vol. 108 No. 2 August 2001, p. e30 ELECTRONIC ARTICLE: Adoption as a Risk Factor for Attempted Suicide During Adolescence Received Dec 27, 2000; accepted Apr 9, 2001.
Gail Slap, Elizabeth Goodman, and Bin Huang From the Division of Adolescent Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Children's Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Objective. Depression, impulsivity, and aggression during adolescence have been ***ociated with both adoption and suicidal behavior. Studies of adopted adults suggest that impulsivity, even more than depression, may be an inherited factor that mediates suicidal behavior. However, the ***ociation between adoption and adolescent suicide attempts and the mechanisms that might explain it remain unknown. The objective of this study was to determine the following: 1) whether suicide attempts are more common among adolescents who live with adoptive parents rather than biological parents; 2) whether the ***ociation is mediated by impulsivity, and 3) whether family connectedness decreases the risk of suicide attempt regardless of adoptive or biological status.
Methods. A secondary analysis of Wave I data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health was conducted, which used a school-based, clustered sampling design to identify a nationally representative sample of 7th- to 12th-grade students, with oversampling of underrepresented groups. Of the 90 118 adolescents who completed the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in-school survey, 17 125 completed the in-home interview and had parents of identified gender who completed separate in-home questionnaire. The subset of adolescents for this study was drawn from the in-home sampling according to the following criteria: 1) adolescent living with adoptive or biological mother at the time of the interview, 2) adolescent had never been separated from mother for more than 6 months, 3) mother was in first marriage at the time of the interview, and 4) the adoptive mother had never been married to the adolescent's biological father. Of the 6577 adolescents in the final study sample, 214 (3.3%) were living with adoptive mothers and 6363 (96.7%) were living with biological mothers.
Variables. The primary outcome measured was adolescent report of suicide attempt(s) in the past year. Other variables included in the analyses were sociodemographics characteristics (gender, age, race/ethnicity, family income, parental education), general health (self-rated health, routine examination in the past year, need for medical care in the past year that was not obtained), mental health (depressive symptoms, self-image, trouble relaxing in the past year, bad temper, psychological or emotional counseling in the past year), risk behaviors (cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, sexual intercourse ever, delinquency, physical fighting in the past year, impulsive decision making), school-related characteristics (grade point average, school connectedness), and family interaction (family connectedness, parental presence, maternal satisfaction with parent-adolescent relationship).
Data Analysis. Univariate analyses were used to compare adoptees versus nonadoptees, suicide attempters versus nonsuicide attempters, and adopted suicide attempters versus nonadopted suicide attempters on all variables. Variables that were ***ociated with attempted suicide were entered into a forward stepwise logistic regression procedure, and variables that were ***ociated with the log odds of attempt were retained in the model. The area under the model's receiver operating characteristic curve was calculated as a measure of its overall performance. After the ***ociation of adoption with attempted suicide was demonstrated, the potential mediating effect of impulsivity was explored by adding it to the model. The same procedure was followed for any variable that was ***ociated with adoption in the full sample or the subsample of suicide attempters. To determine whether any variable in the model moderated the ***ociation between adoption and suicide attempt, the interaction term for that variable ?— adoption was forced into the model.
Results. Adoptees differed significantly from nonadoptees on 4 of 26 variables. They were more likely to have attempted suicide (7.6% vs 3.1%) and to have received psychological or emotional counseling in the past year (16.9% vs 8.2%), and their mothers reported higher parental education and family income. Attempters differed significantly from nonattempters on all variables except for age, race/ethnicity, parental education, family income, and routine examination in the past year. On logistic regression, 9 variables were independently ***ociated with attempted suicide: depression (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 3.41), counseling (AOR: 2.83), female gender (AOR: 2.31), cigarette use (AOR: 2.31), delinquency (AOR: 2.17), adoption (AOR: 1.98), low self-image (AOR: 1.78), aggression (AOR: 1.48), and high family connectedness (AOR: 0.60). The receiver operating characteristic curve for the model had an area of 0.834, indicating performance significantly better than chance. The AOR for adoption did not change when parental education, family income, and impulsivity were forced into the model. None of the interaction terms (adoption ?— another risk factor) demonstrated a significant effect.
Conclusions. Attempted suicide is more common among adolescents who live with adoptive parents than among adolescents who live with biological parents. The ***ociation persists after adjusting for depression and aggression and is not explained by impulsivity as measured by a self-reported tendency to make decisions quickly.
Although the mechanism underlying the ***ociation remains unclear, recognizing the adoptive status may help health care providers to identify youths who are at risk and to intervene before a suicide attempt occurs. It is important to note, however, that the great majority of adopted youths do not attempt suicide and that adopted and nonadopted youths in this study did not differ in other aspects of emotional and behavioral health. Furthermore, high family connectedness decreases the likelihood of suicide attempts regardless of adoptive status and represents a protective factor for all adolescents. Key words: adoption, suicide attempt, adolescence, depression, aggression, impulsivity.
P3Rs: Read all P3Rs Response to "statistically insignificant?" Gail Slap Pediatrics Online, 7 Aug 2001 [Full text] Statistically Insignificant Finding??
Glenn Sugameli Pediatrics Online, 7 Aug 2001 [Full text] Re: Statistically Insignificant Finding??
Steve Gunnell Pediatrics Online, 10 Aug 2001 [Full text] Breastfeeding – A Possible Contributing Factor for Increased Suicide in Adopted Children Cory Mermer Pediatrics Online, 25 Aug 2001 [Full text]
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Copyright ?© 2001 by the American Academy of Pediatrics. [Disclaimer]
"Veba" veba...@hotmail.com
One of the responses: http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/eletters/108/2/e30#220 Allow me acknowledge at the outset that I'm an adoptive parent and am affiliated with LDS Families Supporting Adoption, a volunteer group which provides mentoring, education and advocacy of adoption in the US and other countries.
You state in your study that the age at which the adoption was done was not controlled for. Studies have found differences between adoptees adopted as infants and those adopted later in life. This is important because children coming out of foster care situations, particularly at older ages, are going to have some attachment issues.
Second, do you control for differences between children living with both parents vs living with a single parent, whether adopted or not?
Third, the validity of the study's conclusions depends on ***umptions of random sampling. I have the following questions in this regard: 1- How random was the initial sampling of 90,118 students? 2- What is the potential impact of non-reponse or self-selection bias, i.e., of 90,118 adolescents who completed the in-school survey (the original sample), only 17,125 (19%) completed the in-home survey, which was further reduced to 6,577 to control for various family factors. I'm not a statistician, but it would seem to me that an 80% non-response rate on the home survey could be a significant issue. How would your conclusions be impacted if various subgroups in the study, such as the wealthy, higher income or those with more troubled children respond at higher rates? If you could survey the non responders, controlling for the family profile factors, might you get a very different result?
Finally, ***uming these findings are valid, people need to be very careful about how they use the results. People could intepret this study as being negative about adoption. However, consider the alternatives in many cases: a) staying in the foster care system as a ward of the state (or in the case of other countries, remaining in an orphanage), b) being raised by a single parent (children raised by a single mother generally have lower grades, are much more likely to live in poverty, drop out of school, etc.).
Other studies have shown that children placed with adoptive couples are better off economically and are less depressed, have higher self esteem, a higher sense of security and less involvement with alcohol other problems compared with other teens. Adoptive parents are also less likely to divorce.
juliees ...@aol.com (Julieesrun)
Di, I'll just make this one comment about your study you cite. Did the researchers attempt any comparision between suicide rates of adopted children and children who grow up in single parent households? Or is it ***umed these rates would be similar to two-parent households with no adopted children? The first would be the more correct comparison. Because without an adoption that's the household most of the children would be raised in. You understand that don't you?
Or how about this? A study comparing suicide rates between households where children were the result of family planning vs. being conceived without planning?
Your continual attempts to pathologize adoption show how pathologic you are.
Julie [snipped for brevity]
ghoulag ...@aol.com.net (The All-Powerful All-Knowing One)
God, the idea of adoptees offing themselves en m***e must have you creaming your jeans, huh Di? Whoops!
Ghoulagirl.
"Kim dictates how people think here. If she says it is so then they all believe it to be so. She lives in their heads, you see." - Di the Delusional Birthmother, 5/2/2002
ghoulag ...@aol.com.net (The All-Powerful All-Knowing One)
Whoops again!
Di just loves lumping infant adoptions in with adoptions of older children, many of whom were removed from their BIOfamilies because of abuse. In her mind, there's no connection to the abuse suffered at the hands of their BIOparents and subsequent problems - nope, the cause MUST be adoption!
Di can't hear you, Veba.
Di can't seem to wrap her head around that concept. Trust me, we've all been there with her - it's a lost cause.
Ghoulagirl.
"Kim dictates how people think here. If she says it is so then they all believe it to be so. She lives in their heads, you see." - Di the Delusional Birthmother, 5/2/2002
ghoulag ...@aol.com.net (The All-Powerful All-Knowing One)
ROR!
Nonsense! ALL children are wanted and loved by their ONE TRUE REAL ONLY MOMMIES. It doesn't matter if they were planned or not.
I don't understand her hatred for adoptees - it's not like adoptees did anything to her. Of course, the bastard she gave away managed to get himself conceived at an inconvenient time, and then he made his birthfather dump her, and then he made a bunch of people FORCE Di to relinquish him, thus ruining the rest of her life.
Oh wait, I think I see why she hates all adoptees!
Ghoulagirl.
"Kim dictates how people think here. If she says it is so then they all believe it to be so. She lives in their heads, you see." - Di the Delusional Birthmother, 5/2/2002
susand ...@aol.comment (SusanDyne)
You really don't need to read further than this. They DID NOT control for the most important variable. Adopted at birth compared to the subgroups (foster to adopt, stepparent, kinship, etc). Lumping these groups together destroys the results. They also didn't control for birthparent mental illness -- but I am SURE that is the adopter's fault, as well.
Susan And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin
susand ...@aol.comment (SusanDyne)
She should get together with Dr. Kirschner. He lost 10 out of 10 time in court attempting to use ACS as a defense. Never even got diminished capacity. Wonder why? Ummm, it doesn't exist.
Susan And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin
palms2pi ...@aol.comh8spam (Palms2pines)
Di, the woman who put the "queer" in inquiry.
P2P
rkbose rkb...@pacific.net.sg
Now, I'm going to find that study and see what it may Thanks for the URL, I did just what you said, and I need help in interpreting this. It sounds as though cigarette smoking is a greater risk for suicide attempts than adoption, and being a girl is worse than either. Is this right?
Results. Attempters differed significantly from nonattempters on all variables except for age, race/ethnicity, parental education, family income, and routine examination in the past year. On logistic regression, 9 variables were independently ***ociated with attempted suicide: depression (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 3.41), [So someone who's depressed is 3.4 times more likely to attempt suicide as someone who isn't...] counseling (AOR: 2.83), [Someone who has had counselling is nearly 3x more likely] female gender (AOR: 2.31), [More than twice as many girls as boys] cigarette use (AOR: 2.31), [Cigarette smoking can be injurious to your emotional health?] delinquency (AOR: 2.17), [Delinquents are twice as likely to attempt suicide?] adoption (AOR: 1.98), [Adoptees are nearly twice as likely] low self-image (AOR: 1.78), aggression (AOR: 1.48), and high family connectedness (AOR: 0.60).
None of the interaction terms (adoption ?— another risk factor) demonstrated a significant effect.
"Christin Coralive" coral...@ozemail.com.au
I was an infant, 13 days of age, never seen, held or named by my mother Coral, age 19 when she gave birth to me/relinquished me., her 3rd child to her husband and she planned and executed my adoption under his nose.
as the song goes; I was born under a lucky star because Dr Hart, a huge man, so I've been told, rang Olive my a/mum and asked her if she would like a blue-eyed, fair just born girl, that would look just like you.He had delivered her 35 years earlier and was a long standing family friend, so I got top shelf, no welfare system thankyou very much.
I know she did that to protect me from the abuse she knew was in store for me. So clean slate, to the perfect a/parents?
You don't have the gut's to even acknowledge what I have gained from living this experience and the curtesy to talk about how it feels to experience adoption .
Nope it's just yabba, yabba, hissey fit, spitin firecat bitch, sookie poo bar whine hang on while I have another swig on me Heineken, me that is,while you sling some more shit at us Ozzies here on aa.
Well I'm not too proud of being ozzie at the moment but I reckon youse usains could learn a bit about adoption from us here in the lands down under.
And the discussion here on aa is supposed to be about adoption??? us human's from the rest of the world don't know what the **** most of your yankee humour let's bedazzle them with our superior, bullshit attitude is about but heh my grammar is shot, punctuaton shit and I could't even attribute!!!
What the **** makes a child *Unadoptable* ????
Ahh a voice of reason. Thankyou Christin
lilmtn ...@aol.comnospam (LilMtnCbn)
How many Heinekens have you had already?
ghoulag ...@aol.com.net (The All-Powerful All-Knowing One)
Oh, ROR!
Ghoulagirl.
"Kim dictates how people think here. If she says it is so then they all believe it to be so. She lives in their heads, you see." - Di the Delusional Birthmother, 5/2/2002
"Christin Coralive" coral...@ozemail.com.au
ONE!!!
lilmtn ...@aol.comnospam (LilMtnCbn)
LOL!!
kjs ...@aol.com (Kjs668)
Now that's funny!
"Christin Coralive" coral...@ozemail.com.au
I know, I blame it on being 1/2 irish. Just don't ask me which half.
And it's true, now ifyou wanna ask about the bourbon. Be quick cos it's way past my tuntin time, sleepy time in colonial lingo.
Christin
"helicon" heli...@eircom.net
She quit the Heinekens (they were too noisy to open and the daughter might have GLARED at her) and she graduated to the quieter, gentler, Bourbon. It's not her *drinking* that would concern me, just the constant sip sip sip sip sip sip ....
Helen
"helicon" heli...@eircom.net
Keg?
Helen
ghoulag ...@aol.com.net (The All-Powerful All-Knowing One)
snip My guess is at least ten.
Ghoulagirl.
"Kim dictates how people think here. If she says it is so then they all believe it to be so. She lives in their heads, you see." - Di the Delusional Birthmother, 5/2/2002
ghoulag ...@aol.com.net (The All-Powerful All-Knowing One)
snip ROR!
Ghoulagirl.
"Kim dictates how people think here. If she says it is so then they all believe it to be so. She lives in their heads, you see." - Di the Delusional Birthmother, 5/2/2002
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