Chicago ? A surprising new study disputes the notion that children adopted from other countries tend to be badly damaged emotionally because of the hardships they had to endure.

The analysis of more than 50 years of international data found that these youngsters are only slightly more likely than nonadopted children to have behavioral problems such as aggressiveness and anxiety. And they actually seem to have fewer problems than children adopted within their own countries.

“Our findings may help them fight the stereotype that is often associated with international adoption,” said researchers Femmie Juffer and Marinus H. van IJzendoorn of Leiden University in the Netherlands.

They pooled results from 137 studies on adoptions by parents living in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.

The results are generally reassuring for international adoption – an increasing phenomenon involving more than 40,000 children a year moving among more than 100 countries, the researchers said.

The study appears in today’s Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Behavior problems were uncommon among all children studied, but internationally adopted children had a 20 percent higher chance of being disruptive than nonadopted children, and a 10 percent higher chance of being anxious or withdrawn. They also were twice as likely as nonadopted children to receive mental health services.