Study: Foster kids at risk for mental illnesses

OLYMPIA – Former foster children are twice as likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as Iraq war veterans, a study of 659 Washington and Oregon foster care alumni shows.

The children in the study suffered abuse or neglect before being removed from their parents’ homes.

The study doesn’t look at how foster children fare compared to abused or neglected children who were not removed from their homes.

Researchers said the results show the need for better mental health treatment and support for children who enter the foster care system deeply scarred by previous trauma.

“We are alarmed,” said Ruth Massinga, president and CEO of the Seattle-based Casey Family Programs, which serves and advocates for foster children. “As a country we are not doing right by these children.”

The study released Wednesday says that while many foster children beat the odds and succeed as adults, most struggle with mental health, employment and money problems.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan and Casey Family Programs reviewed cases of 659 adults, ages 20 to 33, who had lived in foster care between 1988 and 1998. They interviewed 479 of them.

Most of the study subjects entered foster care because they were abused or neglected by their birth parents, and all spent at least one year in care.

Even though one-third said they were mistreated in foster care, 81 percent said they felt loved.

More than half the study participants reported mental illness, compared with less than a quarter of the general population.

Foster children are especially at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder: 25 percent of respondents had it.

National studies show that 12 percent to 13 percent of Iraq war veterans and 15 percent of Vietnam War veterans suffer from PTSD.

Post-traumatic stress disorder happens to some people who experience or witness life-threatening events such as military combat, serious accidents, or violent personal assaults.

People with PTSD often relive the trauma through nightmares and flashbacks and feel detached or estranged. Researchers measured PTSD in former foster children using a diagnostic interview developed by the World Health Organization.

“The scars of those experiences stay with these people throughout their lives,” said Harvard Medical School Professor Ron Kessler, one of the lead study authors.

He noted that PTSD is harder to shake for foster children than for other people.

Former foster children are also twice as likely to be depressed (20 percent) as the general population (10 percent).

Foster children are traumatized both by living with abusive parents and by being removed from their homes, the study says.

“It’s really hard for someone to imagine what it’s like to be removed from their family,” said Mary Anne Herrick, a foster care alumni from Seattle who consulted on the study.

“They end up not staying in the same home but moving from one home to the next home, to the next – that kind of instability has really negative effects on a young adult’s mental health and educational achievement.”

Herrick considers herself one of the lucky ones – with a full scholarship and support from her older sister, she graduated from college and earned a master’s degree in social work. The study found that only 2 percent of foster children completed college.

A third of former foster children are at or below the poverty line, three times the national poverty rate. More than one in five foster care alumni were homeless at least once during the year after they left foster care.

Researchers said states know how to improve the system, and the challenge is finding the money.

They prescribe better mental health treatment, more support with school and basic living skills, help for foster and adoptive parents, and better stability for foster children – meaning children should stay in one home.

“It is not the failure of a single individual and it is not a failure of a single system,” Massinga said.

“We are not doing enough to work together. If we are doing the right thing most of the time, most of the children will succeed.”

Nationally, about 800,000 children a year enter foster care. Every year about 8,000 children in Washington and 5,000 children in Oregon enter foster care.

The director of foster care in Washington state, Uma Ahluwalia, said the study has valuable information.

“It’s a sound research product. It validates a lot of our thinking,” she said. Foster children, she said, “need additional supports to transition into adulthood.”

Despite the challenges, Herrick said people should recognize that foster children can beat the odds.

“We’re still moving forward, we’re still living life,” she said. “We are resilient.”