"Generally what would happen is the child presents as relatively healthy and they continue to grow and develop," Dr Blythe said.ĭr Blythe says meth exposure can interfere with a child's ability to control impulses. Her first-hand experience having previously cared for children who have been exposed to substance abuse during pregnancy drove her into researching this field. Stacy Blythe is a nurse, long-term foster carer and an academic.
"We know we can't stop a lot of prenatal exposure, but can we do anything to help these children recover if they have been damaged before birth?" Dr Oei said. It found delays in cognitive development, most significantly in boys. The most significant study done to date, known as the IDEAL study, has followed hundreds of babies exposed to methamphetamine in New Zealand and the United States since 2005. "You get all the services, all the support that you need, but if you use methamphetamine and you feel OK a day or so after birth, off you go."
"If you use methadone, everyone is all over you. "The trouble is we don't have data to show what problems they face after they go home because we can't find them," Dr Oei said. On top of that, a proportion of babies are placed in out-of-home care, where carers are unaware of the drug exposure. "There are no guidelines for their management or their support, or any intervention."ĭr Blythe says carers are often not educated about the issue to manage children appropriately. "Methamphetamine babies are usually what we call the 'very good babies', they sleep a lot and they just fly under the radar. "The trouble is there are no physical signs and a lot of medicine and policies work on physical symptoms," Dr Oei said. Unless the mother admits to taking methamphetamine, Dr Oei said it was difficult to identify babies as being at risk - she predicted up to 90 per cent went undetected. Everyone knows FASD, it's been around forever, but methamphetamine is a new epidemic." "It needs to be as big as or even bigger than FASD (Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders). It's easier to get, it's cheaper and it is much more damaging to the child. "But I think methamphetamine is potentially a much bigger issue. "A lot of the policymakers are consumed with opioid use," she said. Methamphetamine the new 'epidemic'ĭr Oei said she believed a fear of stigmatising these mothers and their children had led to resistance in funding vital research, such as brain imaging. She said while it was clear methamphetamine was neurotoxic - damaging to nerves or nervous tissue - research was only just beginning to identify its potential long-term effects. There is concern many children are not getting the help they need. "You don't necessarily have a child with overt cerebral palsy or disability, but they have a lot of attention, behavioural and subtle cognitive losses that cannot be explained by anything else after you take away the lifestyle, environmental differences and genetic influences." "There is huge concern about the subtle effects of methamphetamines," said Dr Oei, who is also a conjoint professor at the University of NSW. Neonatologist Ju Lee Oei said not only were these babies often overlooked at birth, it was not until they approached school age that concerning behavioural and learning issues really started to emerge, by which time years of treatment opportunities had been missed. While babies addicted to opioids show the jittery signs of immediate withdrawal, methamphetamine-affected babies show little more than a tendency to sleep.
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