Research looking at the effects of adoption on natural parents’ mental health — which was effectively buried or ignored by the adoption industry — has been collected and pieced together by adoption support group Origins Canada.

The group, which says it offers confidential support and resources to people separated from their families by adoption, has created a timeline of key pieces of research, which spans almost four decades.

The research highlights the devastating mental health consequences on mothers who lost their children to adoption, and looks at a range of phenomena including trauma, grief, attachment and anniversary reactions.

The papers also touch on fathers’ reactions to the adoptions – data which is often missing in adoption research.

You can access the research papers here.

Additional resources can be found here.

Many thanks to Tum Mum for alerting us to this library.