Abuse of drugs has crossed geographical, social, and economic borders and remains one of the main issues that the current society is facing globally. The increased use of drugs has become prevalent in young adults of both sexes, with nearly 90 per cent of drug-abusing women of reproductive age. Nevertheless, the precise number of women who abuse drugs remains hidden, and this is because information depends mainly on voluntary patient confession. Most women, therefore, have a tendency to hide information regarding substance abuse from their gynaecologists for fear of discrimination and stigmatization.
The main purpose of this review is to address the topic of drug abuse during pregnancy and its effects on babies. To achieve this purpose, this review shall incorporate two articles, each attempting to address the issue of drug abuse during pregnancy and its effects on infants. The first article which we shall consider in our review is “Perception of pregnancy on consumption of illicit drugs in pregnancy” by Graciela Lima-Costa Portela, Livia Moreira Barros, Natasha Marques Frota, Anna Paula Pequeno Landim, Joselany Afio Caetano, and Francisca Lucellia Ribeiro de Farias. The other article we shall take into account is “Maternal and Neonatal Effects of Substance Abuse during Pregnancy: Our Ten-year Experience” by Mirjana Vucinovic, Damir Roje, Zoran Vucnovic, Vesna Capkun, Marija Bucat, and Ivo Banovic.
In describing “Perception of pregnant on consumption of illicit drugs in pregnancy,” the first article looks at various aspects. One of the most important aspects that need to be understood while undertaking this study is “the perception of pregnancy”. It must be clear what pregnancy is and what the various perceptions of pregnancy are. Also, the definition of illicit drugs is important. The factors considered in this part are the definition of illicit drugs, the categories of illicit drugs, how they are consumed, and what makes pregnant women use these drugs during pregnancy. The various effects that come with the use of illicit drugs by pregnant women are factored into this discussion. Similarly, the consequences, both long-term and short-term, are discussed within this topic. As a final point, remedies of how to deal with this problem are deliberated in detail at the end of the articles.
For the second article, “Maternal and Neonatal effects of substance abuse during pregnancy,” Maternal effects may be defined as a state in which the phenotype of any organism is dictated not only by the genotype and the environment it experiences but also by the genotype and the environment of the mother. Hence, the maternal effect happens when the organism demonstrates the phenotype projected from the genotype of its mother. This mostly occurs as a result of the mother supplying proteins or messenger RNA to the egg. These maternal effects are key in case the effects of substance abuse on pregnancy are to be determined. The relationship between substance abuse and maternal effect must be established so that the above topic can be discussed broadly. The Neonatal effects of substance abuse during pregnancy are also taken into consideration. This is because substance abuse during pregnancy is linked to rising fetal and maternal illness.
Some of the neonatal effects commonly experienced by pregnant women who abuse drugs are premature delivery, miscarriage, low birth weight, and microcephaly. This second article attempts to investigate the various relationship which exists between maternal and neonatal effects and substance use during pregnancy (Vucinovic et al., 2008).
Accordingly, psychology is the science of mind and behaviour, as well as unconscious and conscious occurrences, and it also explains thoughts and feelings. Psychology aims to understand groups and individuals by researching cases and establishing general principles. This topic is relevant to the science of psychology since the research done enables psychologists to understand the reasons why pregnant women abuse drugs, even though it is a bad thing (Edelstein, 1986). The topic goes ahead to explain why these women fear being exposed to their use of drugs in their current state of pregnancy. Disagreeing with the arguments that prosecuting and arresting women will discourage them from abusing drugs, the fear of detection is a barrier to the care of pregnant women. According to reports from psychologists, women normally delay or avoid prenatal care due to fear of punishment.
As a psychologist, the topic of pregnancy and drug abuse is important since it has enabled me to understand the main reason why pregnant women who abuse drugs are usually afraid of disclosing this to people. They fear because of the consequences that will follow, like discrimination and stigmatization. Discrimination and stigma are powerful forces which prevent the treatment of affected women, both pregnant and those who are not expectant (Tuchman, 2010). With this knowledge, as a psychologist, I can devise solutions to deal with the stigmatization and discrimination of pregnant women who abuse drugs. One of the solutions to this issue of stigma and discrimination is to ensure better communication between expectant mothers and the medical staff.
In the first article, “Perception of Pregnant on the Consumption of Illicit Drugs in Pregnancy”, the research problem is to “identify the effects of drug use in pregnancy and its consequences to the newborn baby”. This was a descriptive study that was undertaken in Brazil at a public parental teaching hospital. The data collection process was conducted between April and May 2010. The process of investigation was completed through the use of a semi-structured interview with nine females who had already bore children. A verbal approach was used to ask the participants various questions, and this assisted in hiding the true identity of those women, which was later replaced by the name of a flower (Costa Portela et al., 2013). To select participants for the survey, this was the criteria employed: puerperal female drug abusers who were admitted to this institute and persons whose babies had any difficulties due to the use of drugs during the period of gestation. Those exempted were the female drug abusers who lacked emotional and physical conditions. The number of subjects was accustomed to the principle of statistical permeation, which happens when data received from participants becomes monotonous, or the addition of new figures is too small to succumb for examination.
The instruments used for the interview contained health disease situation, a sense of the puerperal about the infants, information on drug use during gestation, socio-demographic data, substance abuse in the course of lying-in, and observance to prenatal, as well as dynamic exploration in newborn and puerperal archives. For the examination of this information from the interview, a technique that was used consisted of personal context and determining approximate descriptions to highlight the relative strength and nature of the stimuli to which the subject was submitted. Hence, the analysis occurred in three stages. Stage one was referred to as pre-analysis; this phase aims to organize the initial idea, translating it into the development of displays, which authenticate the concluding explanation. The second stage is the exploration of the information, the decomposition of the gathered information, and finally, the classification of the information into meaningful units through the process of encoding (Costa Portela et al., 2013). The final stage, stage three, is where the treatment of the results obtained is done. Here, there must be a subsequent interpretation and description of all the categories presented.
The floating reading was held in the first stage, and this was to allow the building of contact with the participant’s response and note which text to verify the first impression, which only combines the final phase. In the material exploration and organization phase, the coding of the dialogues was accomplished, classifying the name of the mother as a flower (Costa Portela et al., 2013). By this time, after several subsections, understandings and verses, which were consistent with the aims of the research, would permit us to show that the leading assembled concepts were deleted from the text. Consequently, in the final phase, there is a unification of the meaningful units, and this is done after several readings allowed the evidence. The research was undertaken before the puerperal signed the statement of consent, thus valuing the ethics of resolutions to research with humans.
The research problem in the case of “Maternal and Neonatal effects of substance abuse during pregnancy” is to assess the perinatal outcome of pregnancy burdened with maternal addiction in comparison with the unselected population of a European transition country. This study used quantitative data in its analysis (Vucinovic et al., 2008). The rationale for identifying and investigating the research problem in the second article is as follows. In this reflective regiment study, data on various drugs like heroin and methadone habituated expectant females admitted for delivery to the University Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology Split University Hospital in Croatia during a ten-year period was examined.
In the research time from January 1997 to January 2007, there was a total of over 43,000 deliveries with 43,530 newborns. Twin and triplet pregnancies were 0.860% and 0.0166% respectively. There was no instance of stillbirth in the study clutch of addiction pregnancy, so it was excluded. A record of 85 women who were pregnant with 86 neonates were discovered to have consumed illegitimate drugs during their gestation period. These females were chosen from the neonatal and maternal files stored at the branch. Testing was undertaken on 62 participants, after which they confessed to being guilty of drug abuse during pregnancy, during delivery, and after delivery (Vucinovic et al., 2008). Data on the overall perinatal outcome, the period of conception and labour, and the type of drug were taken into consideration. Gestation was calculated as of the beginning of the previous menstruation cycle and adjusted in accordance with ultrasonography. The statistics acquired were equalled with a regulator group, which comprised non-addicted females admitted for labour in the course of the last study frame (n = 43.096) and their infants (43,529). The Statistical analysis of data was conducted using SPSS 10 software, the Whitney test, and a t-test for quantitative data. The level of significance was fixed as (p < 0.05).
Research questions are important since they guide the development of the study. It also helps calculate the sample size and determine the power of the study. In the article, the questions that arise are; “what impact the illicit drug use during pregnancy on the mother and the child?” (Costa Portela et al., 2013) There is a relationship between the research problem and the research question in that it is through the research question that we can establish and formulate the research problem. Thus, the impact of unlawful drug use during gestation for the mother and the child brings rise to the research problem, which was the identification of the effects of drug use in pregnancies and the consequences for the infants.
The research will be able to solve each of the research problems by addressing the subject matter, which is the effects of drug abuse on pregnancy. Also, both of these researchers will enable the concerned parties to know the reasons why pregnant females abuse drugs and what type of drug they mostly abuse, and this will provide a solid basis for developing relevant and adequate solutions to this issue. What is more, it adds to the knowledge base of the reader in that they get to understand the meaning, cause, and relationship between motherly and newborn effects of drug abuse during pregnancy.
In conclusion, substance abuse during pregnancy is an ethically wrong act, and it should be stopped. One of the ways to deal with this issue is by health facilities offering educative programs on the effects of substance abuse, most specifically about pregnancy. Also, the government must lift laws that comprehend the arrest and punishment of pregnant females who abuse drugs. This will make more of these women come out and visit various health centres where they can get appropriate medical assistance. Finally, society must be told that the best way to assist such victims is not through stigmatization and discrimination; rather, they should show love and affection to the victims, hence assisting them to overcome their challenges.
Reference
Costa Portela, G. L., Moreira Barros, L., Marques Frota, N., Pequeno Landim, A. P., Áfio Caetano, J., & Ribeiro de Farias, F. L. (2013). Perception of pregnant on consumption of illicit drugs in pregnancy. SMAD, Revista Electrónica en Salud Mental, Alcohol y Drogas, 9(2).
Edelstein, E. (1986). Psychology of Drug Abuse. In Drugs and Alcohol (pp. 49-52). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Tuchman, E. (2010). Women and addiction: the importance of gender issues in substance abuse research. Journal of addictive diseases, 29(2), 127-138.
Vucinovic, M., Roje, D., Vučnović, Z., Capkun, V., Bucat, M., & Banović, I. (2008). Maternal and neonatal effects of substance abuse during pregnancy: our ten-year experience. Yonsei medical journal, 49(5), 705-713
