Abstract:
Children’s mental health focuses largely on the reduction of internal and externalizing symptoms and behaviors based on western medical models of health. This model often does not include a more expansive perspective of health that considers how childhood experiences continue to manifest later on in life. Ground breaking research on early childhood adversity (ACEs) and adult physical health has helped to provide evidence of the importance of a life course perspective. All adopted adults experience a childhood trauma of parental separation inherent to the adoption experience. Findings from a national study of U.S. adopted adults’ health and mutual aid groups are presented to argue for a more holistic and life course approach to addressing mental health and well-being of children for thriving adulthoods.
Speaker:
Hollee A. McGinnis, PhD, MSW, also-known-as Lee Hwa Young, is a prominent educator, scholar, and community organizer with almost 30 years of community organizing, practice, policy and research experience on adoption and global child welfare. Adopted from South Korea, her work centers the lived experiences of individuals raised in adoptive families across the lifespan and institutional care in South Korea. Her research examines the social and cultural determinants of mental health and well-being, including parental separation, early childhood adversity, racial/ethnic identity development, systemic oppression, cultural loss, and adoptee-led mutual aid groups. Prior to her doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis, she was the Policy Director at the Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York City. She received her Master of Science from Columbia University School of Social Work, and a post-Master’s Clinical Fellowship at the Yale Child Study Center. In 1996 she founded Also-Known-As, Inc., a non-profit adult intercountry adoptee organization in New York City.
Introduction by:
Amir Hampel
Clinical Assistant Professor of Global China Studies
Discussion moderator:
Daniel Jin Blum
Research Assistant Professor of Psychology, NYU Shanghai
