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Aims: Secondary trauma is recognised as one of the negative effects for professionals working with people that have experienced trauma. Research has demonstrated secondary trauma in foster carers but little research has explored trauma symptoms within adoptive parents, facing the emotional impact of parenting a child with adverse early experiences. This study aimed to document the rates of primary and secondary trauma symptoms in adoptive parents. It further explores the association between the extent of current behavioural and emotional challenges and the extent of the child's pre-adoption adverse experiences in predicting parental trauma responses., Method: 190 adoptive parents completed an online survey including self-report measures of primary and secondary trauma., Results: Almost one fifth of adoptive parents exhibited primary trauma scores of clinical concern; with 10% reaching the threshold for a probable diagnosis of PTSD. Participants also reported significantly higher levels of secondary trauma and burnout, and significantly lower levels of compassion satisfaction than population norms. The current behavioural and emotional challenges, including child-to-parent violence, predicted higher trauma scores more so than the extent of their child's past adverse experiences., Conclusions: The findings have clinical implications for identifying trauma symptoms within adoptive parents and wider implications for how we understand secondary and primary trauma. They further highlight the importance of firstly addressing current child behaviour, including child-to-parent violence when treating trauma symptoms. Limitations of this study and recommendations for further research are discussed., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was undertaken as part of a DClinPsy degree to Morvwen Duncan.

In many child services across health, education and social care, 'attachment disorder' is a popular description and explanation for complex presentations of children who have been neglected or maltreated and is frequently used to describe fostered and adopted children. Very often the use of this term bears little resemblance to the established diagnostic systems, nor indeed to attachment theory as conceptualised by Bowlby. Its misuse can lead professionals to overlook commoner and more treatable conditions, to the detriment of the children. In fact both reactive and disinhibited attachment disorders are rare, but are becoming better characterised by high quality research. Poor understanding about the attachment disorder construct can pose particular problems for clinicians working with adopted children. The current paper briefly reviews the practical difficulties with the attachment disorder diagnosis as applied to adopted children and uses four case studies taken from a specialist Adoption and Fostering Service to highlight some of the problems for services working with adopted children. Finally, we propose some provisional recommendations for the assessment and treatment of adopted children and their families, which aim to be consistent with attachment theory as well as with the existing evidence base on wider child mental health problems., (© The Author(s) 2013.)