Institutionalized Chinese children with congenital medical conditions: Placement delay, developmental issues at arrival and current wellbeing

At adoption, the adoptees with congenital medical conditions were, on average, 20 months older than those without congenital medical conditions and had more developmental difficulties. The adopted youth who had two or more congenital conditions at adoption were more than twice as likely as their peers without congenital conditions to have mental disorder diagnoses (62.5% versus 27.63%), and >2.5 times as likely to be receiving treatments (54.17% versus 20.39%). Youth with two or more congenital medical conditions at adoption were 5.5 times as likely as their peers with no congenital conditions to currently have three or more mental disorder diagnoses (33.3% versus 5.9%), and were about 3 times as likely as their peers with no congenital conditions to be receiving medical/psychological treatments (25.0% versus 8.55%). Path analysis showed that developmental difficulties at adoption functioned as a full mediator between the number of congenital conditions at adoption and current number of current mental disorders and number of treatments.