Romanian Orphan Studies: Institutionalisation

• What is institutionalisation?


  A term for the effects of living in an institutional setting. The term ‘institution’ refers to a place like a hospital or orphanage where people love for long, continuous periods of time where often very little emotional care is provided.
• How did an institutionalisation problem arise in Romania in the 90s?

  The former president at the time required Romanian women to have five children. The parents couldn’t afford to keep their children so the children ended up in orphanages. After the 1989 revolution many of the children were adopted, some by British parents
• Rutter et al.’s research - procedure

  • group of 165 Romanian orphans followed for many years as part of a European and Romanian adoptee (ERA) study
  • aim - to investigate extent to which good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions
  • physical, cognitive and emotional development assessed at ages 4, 6, 11, 15 and 22-25 years
  • 52 children from uk adopted around same time - control group
• Zeanah et al.’s research - findings

  • 74% of control group were securely attached
  • 19% of institutional group was securely attached
  • disinhibited attachment applied to 44% of institutionalised children and less than 20% of controls
• Rutter et al.’s research - findings

  • half of the adoptees had delayed intellectual develop and were severely undernourished upon arrival in the uk
  • Age 11 - mean IQ of children adopted before 6 months was 102, 86 for those adopted between 6 months and 2 years and 77 for after 2 years
  • ADHD more common in 15 and 22-25 year old samples
  • children adopted after 6 months showed signs of disinhibited attachment
• What are the effects of institutionalisation?

  Disinhibited attachment:

  • equally friendly and affectionate towards familiar people and strangers (child may have 50 careers but may not spend enough time with them to form a secure attachment

  Intellectual disability:

  • those adopted before six months caught up with control group by age four
• Evaluation eXtra

  social sensitivity - results published as children were growing up so people that know them may have treated them differently but a lot ha a been learned that may benefit future institutionalised children
• Evaluation - positive

  • real-world application - improved understanding on effects of institutional care and how to prevent the effects. This has led to improvements in conditions and the number of caregivers the child has
  • lack of confounding variables - children handed over by loving parents who couldn’t afford to keep them so babies less likely to be affected by other negative early experiences (higher internal validity)
• Evaluation - negative

  • lack of adult data - as the study is longitudinal it will take us some time for us to know more completely about the long-term effects of the Romanian orphans
  • Romanian orphan study may be an extreme form of institutionalisation so may not be completely down to institutionalisation but poor institutional care