Cited by 202Child Welfare and AdoptionChild Abuse and TraumaChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development

Effects of institutional rearing and foster care on psychopathology at age 12 years in Romania: follow-up of an open, randomised controlled trial

Open access
Humphreys, Kathryn L, Gleason, Mary Margaret, Drury, Stacy S, Miron, Devi, Nelson, Charles A, Fox, Nathan A, Zeanah, Charles H·2015·The Lancet Psychiatry

Abstract

Background Early social deprivation can negatively affect domains of functioning. We examined psychopathology at age 12 years in a cohort of Romanian children who had been abandoned at birth and placed into institutional care, then assigned either to be placed in foster care or to care as usual.Methods We used follow-up data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP), a randomised controlled trial of abandoned children in all six institutions for young children in Bucharest, Romania. In the initial trial, 136 children, enrolled between ages 6-31 months, were randomly assigned to either care as usual or placement in foster care. In this study we followed up these children at age 12 years to assess psychiatric symptoms using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (4th edition; DISC-IV). We also recruited Romanian children who had never been placed in an institution from paediatric clinics and schools in Bucharest as a comparator group who had never been placed in an institution. The primary outcome measure was symptom counts assessed through DISC-IV scores for three domains of psychopathology: internalising symptoms, externalising symptoms, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We compared mean DISC-IV scores between trial participants and comparators who had never been placed in an institution, and those assigned to care as usual or foster care. Analyses were done by modified intention to treat. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00747396.Findings We followed up 110 children from the BEIP trial between Jan 27, 2011, and April 11, 2014, and 49 children as comparators who had never been placed in an institution. The 110 children who had ever been placed in an institution had higher symptom counts for internalising disorders (mean 0·93 [SD 1·68] vs 0·45 [0·84], difference 0·48 [95% CI 0·14-0·82]; p=0·0127), externalising disorders (2·31 [2·86] vs 0·65 [1·33], difference 1·66 [1·06-2·25]; p<0·0001), and ADHD (4·00 [5·01] vs 0·71 [1·85], difference 3·29 [95% CI 2·39-4·18]; p<0·0001) than did children who had never been placed in an institution. Compared with 55 children randomly assigned to receive care as usual, the 55 children in the foster-care group had fewer externalising symptoms (mean 2·89 [SD 3·00] for care as usual vs 1·73 [2·61] for foster care, difference 1·16 [95% CI 0·11 to 2·22]; p=0·0255), but symptom counts for internalising disorders (mean 1·00 [1·59] for care as usual vs 0·85 [1·78] for foster care, difference 0·15 [-0·35 to 0·65]; p=0·5681) and ADHD (mean 3·76 [4·61] for care as usual vs 4·24 [5·41] for foster care, difference -0·47 [-2·15 to 1·20; p=0·5790) did not differ. In further analyses, symptom scores substantially differed by stability of foster-care placement.Interpretation Early foster care slightly reduced the risk of psychopathology in children who had been living in institutions, but long-term stability of foster-care placements is an important predictor of psychopathology in early adolescence.Funding National Institute of Mental Health and the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/s2215-0366(15)00095-4

Cites

42 of 42 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Neglect, particularly prevalent in those with a history of institutional care, has been linked to distinct stress physiology, including dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, especially in ways that could affect metabolic regulation.

    “However, neglect, which is particularly prevalent in those with a history of institutional care, has been linked to distinct stress physiology, including dysregulation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis (Humphreys et al., 2015; McLaughlin et al., 2014), especially in ways that could affect metabolic regulation.”

    From Long-term cardiometabolic effects of early institutionalization and foster care: Evidence from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (2026) · cites this paper as Humphreys et al., 2015

    Split into 2 atoms — 0 confirmed, 2 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Disruptive behavior disorder/externalizing symptoms during childhood and adolescence were lower in foster care youth compared to youth randomized to CAUG.

    “Disruptive behavior disorder/externalizing symptoms (e.g., ADHD, conduct disorder) during childhood and adolescence were also lower in foster care youth compared to youth randomized to the CAUG (Humphreys et al., 2015;Wade et al., 2018).”

    From Resilience following severe early life neglect: A review of longitudinal evidence from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (2026) · cites this paper as Humphreys et al., 2015

    The Results (page not available in our copy) report fewer externalising symptoms at age 12 in children randomized to foster care than in the care-as-usual group; the Discussion says this difference was accounted for by boys. The broader claim of lower disruptive-behavior symptoms throughout childhood and adolescence is not established by this follow-up, and the Results explicitly report no foster-care versus care-as-usual difference in ADHD symptoms. (LLM, conf=0.90)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Early factors (e.g., neural patterns, caregiving quality, placement stability, executive functioning) during childhood have been shown to later predict resilience outcomes (e.g., psychopathology, cognition) during adolescence.

    “Early factors (e.g., neural patterns, caregiving quality, placement stability, executive functioning) during childhood have been shown to later predict resilience outcomes (e.g., psychopathology, cognition) during adolescence (Debnath et al., 2020;Humphreys et al., 2015;McDermott et al., 2013;Sheridan et al., 2018).”

    From Resilience following severe early life neglect: A review of longitudinal evidence from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (2026) · cites this paper as Humphreys et al., 2015

    The Discussion says stable, high-quality foster care predicted reduced psychopathology at age 12 among children who had experienced early institutional deprivation. The cited paper does not establish the sentence’s other examples—neural patterns or executive functioning as predictors, or cognition as an adolescent outcome. (LLM, conf=0.87)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • The intervention showed a sleeper effect on externalizing problems, matching previous analyses.

    “Instead, with the exception of externalizing problems for which we observed a sleeper effect consistent with previous analyses in subsets of these data (17,43), we found that the benefits of foster care were similar throughout development.”

    From A Comprehensive Multilevel Analysis of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project: Causal Effects on Recovery From Early Severe Deprivation (2023) · cites this paper as [17]

    The Introduction reports no foster-care effect on externalising symptoms at 54 months, while the age-12 Findings report fewer externalising symptoms in the foster-care group. The Discussion says this later finding *might* represent a sleeper effect, rather than establishing that it did. Our copy also does not establish the claimed consistency with previous analyses of subsets of these data. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Among children who received the intervention, individual differences in the timing of placement into foster care between 6 and 33 months and in placement stability were associated with outcomes in several areas.

    “Consistent with previous analyses of discrete timepoints and domains (15-17, 19, 29), we found that, among children who received the intervention, individual differences in timing of placement into foster care between the ages of 6-33 months and the stability of this placement were associated with outcomes in several areas.”

    From A Comprehensive Multilevel Analysis of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project: Causal Effects on Recovery From Early Severe Deprivation (2023) · cites this paper as [17]

    The Discussion reports that placement stability was associated with internalising and externalising symptoms among children assigned to foster care. It does not report an association between outcomes and differences in the timing of foster-care placement between 6 and 33 months; its findings are limited to psychopathology rather than outcomes across several areas. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Humphreys, K. L., Gleason, M. M., Drury, S. S., Miron, D., Nelson, C. A., Fox, N. A., & Zeanah, C. H.
Affiliations
  • Tulane University (US)
  • Boston Children's Hospital (US)
  • University of Maryland, College Park (US)
Corresponding author
Zeanah, Charles H
Venue
The Lancet Psychiatry
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2015-07
Volume
2
Issue
7
Pages
625-634
ISSN
2215-0366 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2140775007
Cited by
199
References
42
Citations by year
2026: 10 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 25 · 2019: 23 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 5
FWCI
56.96
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • The Lancet Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
  • National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH091363, MH091363)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Child Welfare and Adoption
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
Keywords
institutional upbringing, foster care, institutionalized children, child abandonment, psychopathology, internalizing disorders, externalizing disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Bucharest Early Intervention Project, child mental health, Romanian children, early intervention, child welfare policy
MeSH terms
Mental Disorders, Child, Child, Abandoned, Child, Preschool, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Foster Home Care, Humans, Infant, Male, Romania, Orphanages

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review