31 Mar 2022

374

The Effects of Prenatal Drug Use on Child Development

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Academic level: College

Paper type: Research Paper

Words: 1668

Pages: 6

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The most youthful losses of the contemporary drug scourge in the United States are the huge number of newborn children conceived every year with exposure to prenatally to unlawful drugs use and liquor. Despite the fact that media consideration has fundamentally centered around cracking down on cocaine that has continued to be used by pregnant women, that examination overlooks a large number of pregnant ladies who utilize and mishandle at least one other legitimate and illicit medications. Unfortunately, the polydrug way of most substance use makes it particularly hard to decide the impacts of prenatal drug abuse on child development. Besides, the unpredictability of the circumstances in which some mothers who are fond of using illegal drugs and substance live makes it difficult to trace their kids' development lags. From multiple points of view, children who have been exposed to prenatal drugs look much like other kids who live in comparatively riotous homes or neighborhoods where drug abuse is common phenomenon.

Globally, the rate at which pregnant women are involving themselves in the illegal use of drugs brings up a great deal of issues concerning the impacts of pre-birth drug exposure on the unborn babies as well as the babies’ development. Different Studies have been embraced to decide particular pre-birth tranquilize impacts on subjective and behavioral advancement of children. Kids who have been prenatally presented to unlawful drugs and substance might be in danger of later behavioral and learning challenges. 

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According to Scott & Moreno (2016), they state that Substance use amid pregnancy can be hazardous to the woman's wellbeing and that of her kids in both the short and long term. According to study, pregnant women who use drugs have a direct impact on their unborn babies. This is because every time a woman smokes, drinks alcohol, use marijuana or ingest crack cocaine, so does the fetus. Pregnant women who get addicted to the use of drugs risks their lives and that of their fetus. Taking substance while pregnant expands the odds of birth imperfections, which include giving birth to an underweight child and stillborn births. 

Effect of Marijuana

The infants who were conceived by mothers who used cannabis while pregnant suffer from low birth weight in newborn. Cannabis exposure in the womb can cause a number of problems. Marijuana causes behavioral and mental defects in a child as well as long term problems. The children whose mothers got involved in illegal drugs while they were still pregnant, also happens to be exposed to these drugs in one way or the other. This is because these children suffer from significant risks that limit them from developing like other kids. Such children's' motor skills, cognitive and social skills tend to be lower than other children of their age. One study showed an expanded rate of the lessened head perimeter in teenagers who were between the age of 9-12 years old and who were exposed in utero to h a lot of cannabis usage. In addition, these children suffered from behavioral and learning difficulties later in life (Minnes, 2011).

Human studies have demonstrated that a few children destined to ladies who were using cannabis amid their pregnancies react distinctively to visual stimuli. They tremble more, and tend to cry most of the times during the day and at night. This indicates the problems which could show issues with neurological improvement. In school, kids prenatally presented to cannabis will probably prove to be slow when it comes to cognitive skills like problem-solving, thinking aptitudes, memory, and the capacity to stay calm. Marijuana smoking causes the children’s minds to have an inherent instability. This, therefore, tends to leave the kids with severe hazards that result in the development of certain psychiatric conditions as they grow up.

Effect of Alcohol

Liquor is the main source of preventable inherent inabilities and formative handicaps in the United States. This is because alcohol in the blood of a pregnant woman can be passed to her unborn child through the blood system. Alcohol damages and affects the growth of the baby’s brain cells as well as the spinal cord cells. Successive or substantial utilization of liquor amid pregnancy can bring about a star grouping of qualities known as fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). Kids with FAS have development insufficiencies, particular facial mutations, and mental hindrance. A few youngsters who are liquor uncovered might not have full FAS but rather one and only or two signs that may then be called fetal alcohol effects (FAE).However, it has not been full estimated how much liquor prompts to these issues.Research has it that women who take alcohol when they are pregnant are at high risks of exposing their unborn babies to FAS (Gov.UK, 2016).

Effect of Cocaine

Cocaine use amid pregnancy can influence a pregnant lady and her unborn child from multiple points of view. It is connected with maternal headaches and seizures, untimely layer burst, and partition of the placental covering from the uterus preceding conveyance. Typical cardiovascular changes go with pregnancy, and cocaine uses fuels these occasionally prompting to major issues with hypertension, unconstrained unsuccessful work, preterm work, and difficulties while giving birth. Pregnant ladies who have a habit of using cocaine must get proper therapeutic and mental care including dependence treatment to lessen these dangers. Babies who are said to be exposed to cocaine before they are conceived have high chances of major health problems right from day one of their existence. Infants of ladies who take cocaine frequently amid pregnancy are somewhere around three and six times more inclined to be conceived at a low birth weight (under 5.5 pounds) than children of ladies who don't use the drug at any given time. Low birth weight can come about because of poor development before birth, untimely birth, or a blend of both. Low-birth-weight infants are 20 times more prone to succumb to death in their first month than ordinary weight babies. The little babies who survive are at expanded danger of long-lasting handicaps including mental hindrance, cerebral paralysis, and visual and hearing impairment.

Impact on Child Development

Children's development includes the physical, mental, social, and emotional development. Therefore, children who are prenatally exposed to drugs at birth show more unusual reflexes, less motor development, and lesser capacity to direct their condition of mindfulness than those children who are unexposed. When such children turn one year and three years, they become less adaptable and more likely to be ornate and overly persistent than the unexposed babies (Irner, 2012). Development, however, is influenced by genetic predispositions as well as by environmental conditions. Youngsters' individual protected and genetic components make them pretty much ready to withstand the natural difficulties or ecological dangers that they confront. As adverse environmental conditions collect, youngsters turn out to be not so much strong but rather more helpless against issues. For instance, drugs sedated in the newborn child's framework during childbirth, combined with poor sustenance, lacking pre-birth care, and disregard or mishandle amid the early years may associate to make a powerlessness that won't have existed if one or two of the hazard variables had been available.

As youngsters enter their school years, surveying the long haul results of drug exposure turns out to be significantly more troublesome as school, educator, friends, and neighborhood elements are included to the maternal, family, guardian, and other home impacts that keep on shaping the kids' improvement. In addition, in the wake of sorting through the impacts of these thriving factors, a few studies have been performed, and the results indicate that, those children who were born to mothers who used drugs while pregnant perform poorly in their academics as compared to the children's whose mothers never involved in drug use. More study shows that youngsters who were exposed to cocaine while still in their mother's womb were academically poor performers in their grades (Harrison, 2012). These children according to review, require specialized curriculum classes to help them in their studies so that they can be at the same level as their peers in the classroom.

Effects on Attention, Alertness, and Intelligence

Studies show that pregnant mothers who consume drugs risk their children’s development of the brain which regulates the attention, arousal and reaction to stresses. Drug-exposed babies are more probable than unexposed youngsters to have scored at the low end of the typical ranges on examinations that test readiness, consideration, and insight. Nonetheless, the impacts continue from birth through initial adolescence and propose that children who were exposed to drugs and substance while still in their mother’s womb, may need to work harder or will require more help. This would assist them to be attentive at all times, be alert as well as process information just like their peers who were not exposed to drugs (Robinson, 2013).

Drug Treatment

Treatment for women who have been using illegal drugs for a long, long period of time may advance uniquely in contrast to the treatment for men under the same case. Women are said to use drugs for a shorter period than men after which they become in need of medication or the worst happen to them. In addition, women are at high risks of becoming addicted to drugs quickly once they start using them. Withdrawal may likewise be more extreme for ladies, and it might take a lot of time to help them forget the use of these illegal drugs. Women also react uniquely in contrast to men to specific medications. Ladies might be reluctant to get help amid or after pregnancy because of conceivable legitimate or social apprehensions and absence of youngster care while in treatment. Ladies in treatment frequently require support for taking care of the weights of work, home care, youngster mind, and other family duties.

Particular projects can safely assist the pregnant ladies in ways that they could utilize to stop taking drugs. These programs could also help the pregnant women in their prenatal care so that the unborn child can be safe. Certain sorts of treatment have demonstrated positive results, particularly in the event that they provide care services. These among others include; child care, classes on how to bring up one's children, and employment preparation classes. Medical Prescriptions can treat the pregnant women and also prevent diseases to the unborn babies. Some unborn children, however, require treatments that will help them in the withdrawal symptoms. However, results are better for the infant if the mother takes treatment prescription amid pregnancy than if she keeps on utilizing opioids (Irner, 2012).

Conclusion

Substance-exposed kids are differing bunches who are at an expanded weakness to later challenges in learning and character. This increased helplessness is the consolidated consequence of the pre-birth introduction mixed with other characteristic and ecological factors. Without doubts, any child prenatally exposed to drugs or not, and who is raised in a drug-abusing home is at expanded problems and challenges as they grow up.

References

Gov.UK,. (2016). Alcohol in pregnancy - NHS Choices. Nhs.uk . Retrieved from http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/pages/alcohol-medicines-drugs-pregnant.aspx

Harrison, P. A., Godecker, A., & Sidebottom, A. (2012). Validity of the Prenatal Risk Overview for Detecting Drug Use Disorders in Pregnancy.  Public Health Nursing, 29 (6), 563-573. 

Irner, T. B. (2012). Substance exposure in utero and developmental consequences in adolescence: A systematic review.  Child Neuropsychology, 18 (6), 521-549. 

Robinson, M. (2013). How the First Nine Months Shape the Rest of Our Lives.  Australian Psychologist, 48 (4), 239-245. 

Scott-Goodwin, A., Puerto, M., & Moreno, I. (2016). Toxic effects of prenatal exposure to alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.  Reproductive Toxicology,   61 , 120-130. 

Sonia Minnes, L. (2011). Prenatal Tobacco, Marijuana, Stimulant, and Opiate Exposure: Outcomes and Practice Implications. PubMed Central (PMC) . Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3188826/.

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StudyBounty. (2023, September 16). The Effects of Prenatal Drug Use on Child Development.
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