Babies fight drug addiction in Michigan's Upper Peninsula
May 8, 2018 6:09 AM Subscribe
This is poorly written and sensationalistic. I'm hardly Maias and even I can tell stuff is factually incorrect here.
"They'd love him because it's difficult to resist a baby, so cute, so innocent, so vulnerable. And also because lots of times the parents of these drug-exposed babies disappear into the darkness of their own lives and the nurses are all the babies have. They are the only people to talk softly to them and hold them when they are miserable from stomach cramps or raw from diaper rash brought on by the diarrhea that often accompanies their withdrawal. The only people to tell them they are beautiful and special." Wouldn't it be novel if we could treat adult people with substance use disorders with this kind of compassion?
posted by colorblock sock at 9:41 AM on May 8, 2018 [9 favorites]
"They'd love him because it's difficult to resist a baby, so cute, so innocent, so vulnerable. And also because lots of times the parents of these drug-exposed babies disappear into the darkness of their own lives and the nurses are all the babies have. They are the only people to talk softly to them and hold them when they are miserable from stomach cramps or raw from diaper rash brought on by the diarrhea that often accompanies their withdrawal. The only people to tell them they are beautiful and special." Wouldn't it be novel if we could treat adult people with substance use disorders with this kind of compassion?
posted by colorblock sock at 9:41 AM on May 8, 2018 [9 favorites]
I thought it was appropriate to classify these infants as dependent on a substance, not as "addicts", since they aren't eligible for participation in the social and behavioural components of addiction. I mean, they aren't about to pawn their Smith-Corona and go to meet their man.
posted by thelonius at 10:32 AM on May 8, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 10:32 AM on May 8, 2018 [4 favorites]
So I agree that this article could have taken a slightly less sensationalist tone and been more heavy on the facts (although, to be honest, the research is kind of scant because some of the real long term effects are not super well studied), but in general it does point to a huge problem that is being felt across the country.
As part of my work, I work on an interdisciplinary team twice a week in a Neurodevelopmental Evaluation clinic, where we see kids with major developmental problems who have exhausted their local resources and often wait to get into our clinic for 6 months. The need is so huge. Some of the kids are seen for complex genetic conditions or other types of developmental things - but we also see a lot of babies that were born addicted to drugs, usually opioids or meth.
These kids have all manners of developmental delays including speech and motor delays, cognitive issues, and, perhaps especially in at least my own experience, an array of behavioral issues including severe ADHD, ODD. Many of them don't sleep well, which creates a very difficult cycle. One big problem in understanding the effects is that it can be hard to tease apart the extent to which these issues are caused by in-utero drug exposure vs the fact that drug exposure is often seen in conjunction with premature birth, low birth weight, poor apgars, and poor pre-natal care, and all of those things can be risk factors for the same developmental problems. For example, as far as my work is concerned, studies seem to suggest that children with in-utero drug exposure are not more likely to have hearing loss, but they are more likely to be born preterm, have a NICU stay, get a bunch of antibiotics, and it's those things which increase the risk of hearing loss.
These children are often taken from their birth mothers, at least temporarily, because the situation is deemed to be a safety risk for the child. Not because mom would hurt the child, but just because it doesn't seem she is able to care for a newborn adequately. I DO wish there was generally a much better system for helping mom AND baby in these situations, but most hospitals tend to bring in DHS and then send mom on her way and into the legal system without any additional support for her own health or with any real path to getting healthy and getting her child back. We here at this specialty hospital are much better at that and work extensively with social workers and such but we do this everyday and a lot of the critical access hospitals where these kids are born don't have the knowledge or resources to do any better.
Unfortunately, I don't see this changing for the better anytime soon, at least in my state, as our Medicaid program, which covers almost of these mothers and their kids, is so completely broken that any kind of systemic program to address this issue seems impossible at this point. At least here, our politicians pay lip service to the problem, but at the end of the day have spent their time in congress this year passing a huge tax cut and the most restrictive abortion bill in the country, so clearly they don't have poor mothers' best interest at heart.
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:11 AM on May 8, 2018 [8 favorites]
As part of my work, I work on an interdisciplinary team twice a week in a Neurodevelopmental Evaluation clinic, where we see kids with major developmental problems who have exhausted their local resources and often wait to get into our clinic for 6 months. The need is so huge. Some of the kids are seen for complex genetic conditions or other types of developmental things - but we also see a lot of babies that were born addicted to drugs, usually opioids or meth.
These kids have all manners of developmental delays including speech and motor delays, cognitive issues, and, perhaps especially in at least my own experience, an array of behavioral issues including severe ADHD, ODD. Many of them don't sleep well, which creates a very difficult cycle. One big problem in understanding the effects is that it can be hard to tease apart the extent to which these issues are caused by in-utero drug exposure vs the fact that drug exposure is often seen in conjunction with premature birth, low birth weight, poor apgars, and poor pre-natal care, and all of those things can be risk factors for the same developmental problems. For example, as far as my work is concerned, studies seem to suggest that children with in-utero drug exposure are not more likely to have hearing loss, but they are more likely to be born preterm, have a NICU stay, get a bunch of antibiotics, and it's those things which increase the risk of hearing loss.
These children are often taken from their birth mothers, at least temporarily, because the situation is deemed to be a safety risk for the child. Not because mom would hurt the child, but just because it doesn't seem she is able to care for a newborn adequately. I DO wish there was generally a much better system for helping mom AND baby in these situations, but most hospitals tend to bring in DHS and then send mom on her way and into the legal system without any additional support for her own health or with any real path to getting healthy and getting her child back. We here at this specialty hospital are much better at that and work extensively with social workers and such but we do this everyday and a lot of the critical access hospitals where these kids are born don't have the knowledge or resources to do any better.
Unfortunately, I don't see this changing for the better anytime soon, at least in my state, as our Medicaid program, which covers almost of these mothers and their kids, is so completely broken that any kind of systemic program to address this issue seems impossible at this point. At least here, our politicians pay lip service to the problem, but at the end of the day have spent their time in congress this year passing a huge tax cut and the most restrictive abortion bill in the country, so clearly they don't have poor mothers' best interest at heart.
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:11 AM on May 8, 2018 [8 favorites]
Maine, Vermont, and West Virginia all have similarly high rates. Seems like wherever there are OHV and snowmobile trails, there are drugs.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:14 PM on May 8, 2018
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:14 PM on May 8, 2018
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posted by yarly at 9:17 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]