The Psychiatric Status of the Legal Families of Adopted Hyperactive Children

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Abstract
Interviews with the legal parents of 35 adopted hyperactive children are described, and psychiatric diagnoses are compared with previously reported groups of biologic and control parents. The high prevalence of hysteria, sociopathy, and alcoholism found in biologic parents of hyperactive children were not found in the adopting parents nor were the latter especially likely to have been hyperactive themselves. These data are consistent with genetic transmission of the syndrome; a polygenic mode is postulated.

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