The problem of substance abuse in Ireland is not garnering unprecedented attention, but some advocacy groups are trying to draw attention to another negative impact of substance abuse in the country – the impact on Ireland’s children. Alcohol Addiction Ireland has been campaigning for over three years to draw attention to these silent victims of substance abuse.

Parental Substance Abuse Impacts Children

The National Advisory Committee on Drugs (NACD) in Ireland recently released a new report titled “Parental Substance Misuse: Addressing its Impact on Children.” The report was a compilation of all known significant international research which dealt with the topic of substance abusing parents and its impact on their children.

Those closest to the research said that the report makes plain that, compared to children whose parents are not abusers of alcohol or drugs, children whose parents abuse substances are significantly more apt to “experience a cascading chain of problems.” Those problems may include:

• Impaired mental health
• Poor academic performance
• Problems with social skills
• An increased likelihood that they themselves would suffer substance abuse problems

Alcohol and drug misuse lead to poor parenting, stressful family situations, and sometimes foster care or homelessness for children. For the child, this can create desperate feelings of emotional isolation frequently associated with social marginalization. Sadly, according to this report, the problems engendered by parental substance abuse do not end with childhood, but are likely to cause suffering throughout their adult lives and in many cases, even into the third generation.

How to Help Addicted Parents & Their Children

Steps to help solve the problem suggested within the report focused on a couple of key areas. First, the report highlights the necessity of better coordination among adult addiction services, child and family services, and the medical profession. Since addiction does not impact only one person, it only makes sense to more effectively coordinate healing efforts, too. Recent estimates suggest that somewhere between 61,000 and 104,000 children under the age of 15 years live with an alcoholic parent.

The study further suggests improvements in the area of prenatal substance abuse prevention. One study of women who came through the Coombe Women’s Hospital discovered that nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of the 43,318 women surveyed admitted to drinking while they were pregnant. Drinking during pregnancy can be extremely damaging to the baby, raising the risk of fetal alcohol disorders.

Alcohol Abuse in Ireland

Ireland consumes more alcohol per capita than any other European country. The rate of alcoholism in the country is climbing and it is taking a heavy toll on the country’s children. It is estimated by some that one in 10 adults in Ireland is alcoholic; other estimates predict that the rate of alcoholism is even higher.

The misuse of mood-altering substances never affects only the person who abuses drugs or alcohol but instead impacts a minimum of four to five other people around them – most often children. The negative impact of substance abuse on children can make childhood a period of emotional desperation and the scars do not go away, but continue to impact lives all the way into adulthood.

Children of Drug Addicts Are More Likely to Have Problems as Adults is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Overall, about one-third of U.S. children in the age span from 10 to 19 years receive a prescription medication for an ongoing condition. Since 2001, however, the Medco Health Solutions report says drug prescriptions for children are rising for conditions including diabetes, asthma and psychotic conditions. Findings from a National Institutes of Health study also point to a quickly rising level of mood-changing drugs given to foster children, in comparison to the total children’s population.

Some studies suggest mood-altering medications may be given to foster children up to three times more often than non-foster children. School psychologist Charles Manos says the problem may lie in a societal trend to treat children’s symptoms with drugs instead of trying to learn more about the unwanted behaviors. This may be especially true for foster children, who have already gone through some type of disturbance or violence at the hands of a caregiver. For these children, symptoms may be more pronounced, thus prompting higher numbers of prescribed medications.

Manos fears that people may falsely believe a prescribed drug can actually improve a cure or disorder – when in reality, drugs are designed to help with the symptoms. In terms of psychotropic medications, or those known to change a person’s mood, children can become detached and act so different that parents and school officials may not be pleased with the results. Still, the drugs have been reported to be increasing in numbers at live-in children’s treatment centers for mental illness and mood disorders. One children’s treatment center study showed that more than half (55 percent) of its patients who are foster children were receiving mood-altering medications.

Experts who serve foster children as clients believe closely monitoring children’s dosages and side effects is critical; some prescriptions even require testing a child’s liver functioning and blood to prevent possible health hazards.

Yale School of Medicine clinical associate professor of pediatrics Dr. Jack Fong encourages people to consider a healthy give-and-take when it comes to children’s prescriptions. Fong suggests not looking for the fastest cure for the symptoms, but rather a plan that relates the child’s individual problems.

Overprescribing of medications to foster children remains a serious concern. Some experts, however, say drug therapy should not be considered negative as a whole because it can produce positive effects when children have gone through serious abuse and are embarking on a journey toward wellness.

Foster Children May Receive Three Times Higher Levels of Prescription Medications is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

"This was just totally unexpected. No one has ever seen this type of exposure in young children. It’s never been documented. And it’s laying a foundation for drug abuse for a whole generation,” he said.

Matthew Mosk and Brian Ross of ABC News report that this first-ever look at household exposure to opium and heroin is not yet complete, but State Department officials and contractors shared preliminary findings exclusively with ABC News in hopes of drawing attention to a problem they say has been largely overlooked. The researchers said what they uncovered is both shocking and tragic.

Their field testing of homes of known drug users found that small children, even infants, have been passively exposed to heroin and opiates by the adult users in their homes. Some have inhaled dangerous quantities of second-hand smoke. Others have ingested traces of the drugs settling all around them, coating their pillows and blankets and leaving a film atop carpets and furniture. The chronic exposure is leading to levels of addiction rarely seen in children so young, the researchers told ABC News. If the problem is left unaddressed, they said, the consequences could be dire.

"This is a doomed generation of children," Goldberger said. "These children are classic opium or heroin addicts. They crave the drug. If the drug is withdrawn, they go through withdrawal."

Goldberger said he believes similar levels of narcotics in the bloodstream of pregnant women may help explain why Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the world.

How many children are affected is not known. U.S. officials said 2005 estimates that there are 900,000 drug users among Afghanistan’s 30 million people are outdated—and that the numbers of heroin and opium users in particular have grown dramatically. So far, the samples collected by teams of American scientists have only been focused on answering the question of how adult drug use impacts children in the home.

A former top U.S. Drug Enforcement official who helped the scientists gather hair, blood, and urine samples from homes around the country told ABC News that his teams found high levels of addiction flowing from one generation to the next. A fact sheet prepared by the State Department has some of the raw numbers: In 31 of 42 homes where adult addicts lived, children tested showed signs of significant drug exposure.

Both American and Afghan counter narcotics officials said this is a new problem for the country. Afghanistan has for many years been a primary source of opium for the rest of the world. But only in recent years, as refugees from war fled to Pakistan and Iran, did a significant number of Afghans start using the drugs themselves. When they returned home, they brought both drug use and its noxious byproducts back with them, said Doug Wankel, who spent decades as the DEA’s top man in Afghanistan and is now based in Kabul for the U.S. consulting firm, Spectre Group International.

Compounding the problem, Wankel said, is that the drug traffic originating in Afghanistan has changed, with more opium being converted into heroin before it leaves the country’s borders.

Now, he said, "you’ve got enough heroin available to more than meet the demand of the international market… You actually have supply creating demand in a place like Afghanistan."

Dr. Mohammed Zafar, an Afghan counter narcotics official, confirmed that his country "did not have such a problem as we have it presently." And he said his government has few resources to fix it. "We have a very limited drug specialization centers, which is not enough for the drug population of Afghanistan which is more than one million," he said.

U.S. State Department officials have begun to establish drug treatment facilities in the most hard hit parts of the country. The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has established three programs in Afghanistan for addicted women and children, and expect three more to open their doors within the next month. An international team that includes World Health Organization officials and experts from Johns Hopkins University and the Medical University of Vienna have designed the first-ever treatment regimes for young children.

But U.S. officials say there remain an array of challenges in treating a population that has be resistant to the physical and psychological rigors involved in kicking such highly addictive drugs.

Wankel said he believes the growing rate of addiction will increasingly prove to be a challenge for American troops who are attempting to stand up a police force and dissuade Afghans from becoming radicalized.

"It plays well into the hands of those who want to continue insurgency, certainly corruption, criminality," he said. "It’s a serious, serious problem."
 

High Levels of Opium and Heroin Detected in Very Young Afghan Children is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

"About one in 10 parents/caregivers think that their toddlers, preschoolers, and children have a sleep problem," said Maria M. Wong, associate professor in the department of psychology at, Idaho State University, citing several studies. "The prevalence of problem sleepiness among adolescents and young adults, ages 12 to 25 years, is not only high but also increasing. Some serious consequences include increased risk of unintentional injuries or death, such as car accidents, low academic performance, negative moods, and increased use of alcohol and drugs."

"Sleep and sleepiness problems are important issues in childhood and adolescence," added Tim Roehrs, director of research at the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at the Henry Ford Hospital. "There are emerging data that the prevalence of chronic insomnia in children and adolescents is not that different than that seen in adults. There also are emerging data that there is morbidity associated with insomnia and sleepiness in childhood and adolescence — school and social problems and the data of the present study now add substance problems."

Wong explained that her group’s previous work had shown an association between childhood sleep problems and the early onset of substance use in adolescence. "In those studies, overtiredness and having trouble sleeping predicted onset of alcohol, cigarette, and illicit drug use among boys and onset of alcohol use only among girls," she said.

"Most of our participants are young adults right now. So we wanted to test for the association between sleep problems and substance problems now that they are older."
For this family study, researchers had secured the participation of 386 adolescents (292 boys, 94 girls). Data on sleep problems and substance use were gathered in six regular waves — at three to five, six to eight, nine to 11, 12 to 14, 15 to 17, and 18 to 20 years of age — as well as in seven annual waves, from ages 11 to 17.

"We found that ‘having trouble sleeping’ in early childhood, ages three to five, predicted a higher probability of ‘having trouble sleeping’ in adolescence, ages 11 to 17, which in turn predicted the presence of drug-related problems in young adulthood ages 18 to 21," said Wong. "Overtiredness in early childhood predicted lower response inhibition — that is, having problems inhibiting impulses and behavior — in adolescence, which predicted higher numbers of illicit drugs used. Overtiredness in childhood also directly predicted the presence of binge drinking, blackouts, driving after drinking alcohol, and the number of lifetime alcohol problems in young adulthood."
"As a specialist in sleep and sleep-disorders medicine and also alcoholism and drug abuse," said Roehrs, "I was not surprised by this report. However, I suspect the pediatrician or family-care physician and the lay person may be surprised. Despite some design issues, this study is an important first step in understanding the relation between sleep problems and substance use problems, particularly among adolescents. Previous studies that have reported such a relation are cross-sectional. This is the first prospective study and it is important from that perspective. Secondly, possible mediators of this relation have been identified."

Wong noted that her study does not directly explain why this relationship exists. "Childhood sleep problems appear to have both direct and indirect effects — via sleep trouble and response inhibition in adolescence — on subsequent substance-related outcomes," she said. "Additionally, our previous work showed childhood sleep problems were associated with early onset of alcohol and drug use, which was a well-established risk factor for subsequent alcohol and drug related problems. This suggests a marker of alcohol problems that may be detectable very early in the life course."

"The bottom line is, sleep is important," said Roehrs. "Even if it is not causal for this relation, improving sleep will modify and minimize the risks. In the addicted adult, at least the alcoholic, sleep problems that remain after the initial acute withdrawal are predictive of relapse."

Wong suggested several steps. "First, it is important to increase public awareness of the significance of sleep problems in children, and their potential effect on self-control and later substance use and abuse," she said. "Second, substance abuse prevention and intervention programs need to consider the relationships among sleep problems, self-control, and the increased risk for substance abuse. Third, health care providers may need to become more aware of the potential serious consequences of childhood sleep problems, and provide treatment when sleep disturbances are clinically indicated."

Childhood Sleep Problems Linked to Later Drug and Alcohol Use is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Psychological scientists Robert Weis and Brittany C. Cerankosky of Denison University conducted a study examining short-term effects of video game ownership on academic development in young boys. Families with boys between the ages of 6 to 9 were recruited for this study. The families did not own video game systems, but the parents had been considering buying one for their kids.

The children completed intelligence tests as well as reading and writing assessments. In addition, the boys’ parents and teachers filled out questionnaires relating to their behavior at home and at school. Half of the families were selected to receive a video game system (along with three age-appropriate video games) immediately, while the remaining families were promised a video game system four months later, at the end of the experiment.

Over the course of the four months, the parents recorded their children’s activities from the end of the school day until bedtime. At the four-month point, the children repeated the reading and writing assessments and parents and teachers again completed the behavioral questionnaires.

The results of this study showed that the boys who received the video game system immediately spent more time playing video games and less time engaged in after-school academic activities than boys who received the video game system at the end of the experiment. Furthermore, the boys who received the video game system at the beginning of the study had significantly lower reading and writing scores four months later compared with the boys receiving the video game system later on. Although there were no differences in parent-reported behavioral problems between the two groups of kids, the boys who received the video game system immediately had greater teacher-reported learning problems.

Further analysis revealed that the time spent playing video games may link the relationship between owning a video game system and reading and writing scores. These findings suggest that video games may be displacing after-school academic activities and may impede reading and writing development in young boys.

The authors note that when children have problems with language at this young age, they tend to have a tougher time acquiring advanced reading and writing skills later on. They conclude, "Altogether, our findings suggest that video-game ownership may impair academic achievement for some boys in a manner that has real-world significance."

Video Games May Hamper Academic Development in Some Children is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Science Daily reports that Jennifer L. Temple, PhD, a neurobiologist, assistant professor of exercise and nutrition sciences at the University at Buffalo, and director of its Nutrition and Health Research Laboratory, is looking for answers to these questions through a 4-year, $800,000 study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Her paper addressing the first question appears in the December 2009 issue of Behavioural Pharmacology, and is considered the first study to show a gender effect in the appeal of caffeinated soda in young people.

Given the effects of caffeine in adults, the researchers expected to see a difference between those who habitually consumed a lot of soft drinks and those who consumed few. However, results showed that the difference was between boys and girls: The boys in the study worked harder and longer on a computer-based exercise to obtain caffeinated drinks.

Temple and colleagues have now completed the second part of the study a double-blind, placebo-controlled, dose-response study of the effects of caffeine on the teenagers’ blood pressure, heart rate and hand tremor. Two papers currently are being written reporting the results.

The third, and perhaps the most important question in the study, focusing on the effect of caffeine consumption during adolescence on later use of legal or illegal drugs, is getting underway.

Temple’s primary research interest is a behavior called food reinforcement. She became intrigued with caffeine consumption in children after conducting a small study in 8-12-year-olds.

“We had a lot of kids who were drinking not only soda, but coffee,” she relates. “I had 12-year-old girls who said that all they had that morning was a cup of coffee. I started thinking, ‘This can’t be good.’”

These findings led her to study how hard a person will work to obtain a particular food, or in this case, a caffeine drink—and how food reinforcement mimics drug addiction. She is trying to understand the mechanisms that underlie such reinforcement, and if it can be redirected to a more healthy habit.

The just-published study on the reinforcing value of caffeine involved 26 boys and 23 girls ages 12-17. The participants, who were not aware the study was testing caffeine’s reinforcement effects, were placed into groups based on their reported caffeine consumption, in any form.

Participants underwent a baseline test to determine if they could taste caffeine in the study drinks (they couldn’t), and a run-through to familiarize them with the computer-based program they would be using in the experiment.

To give participants experience with the study drinks, they were sent home with a week’s supply of test soda, randomized to be caffeinated or non-caffeinated, and were instructed to drink a 32-ounce bottle every day, for seven days, and no other soda or caffeinated products. During the second week, they obtained a week’s supply of the opposite drink.

Participants then returned to a laboratory equipped with two computers, one on which participants played a computer game to earn caffeinated drinks and on the other, non-caffeinated drinks, although the drinks’ caffeine status was blinded. The longer they played, the more difficult the game became.

Temple said the difference in the reinforcing potential of caffeine between males and females, but not between high and low consumers, was surprising. “These data are novel and they add to the small, but growing, body of literature on caffeine use in children and adolescents.”

She speculates these sex differences could be based on the effect of circulating hormones at the time of the test, although this was not measured, and the possibility that females are less sensitive to the effects of caffeine.

Alison M. Bulkley, Laura Briatico and Amber M. Dewey, all former or current undergraduate students in Temple’s lab, also contributed to the study.

Researchers Studying Addictive Effects of Caffeine on Young People is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

"Chewing tobacco appears to be strongly influenced by beliefs passed on by older relatives," said lead author, Dr. Pramil N. Singh from Loma Linda University in southern California. "The behavior is seen as a rite of passage into womanhood. Further research is needed to find out whether village health workers actively promote its medicinal use."

Stewart Parnacott of Examiner.com writes that the potential risks of chewing tobacco while pregnant range from low birth weight to fetal addiction syndrome and even stillbirth.

Women in Camdobia—and elsewhere—should be encouraged to use more natural, alternative methods to ease nausea. Certain methods include the incorporation of ginger, ginger root, olives, and soda crackers into their diets, writes Parnacott.

The two substances in ginger that aid in the process of digestion are gingerols and shogaols. Both of these help to increase the secretion of digestive juices which stimulate the appetite and tone the muscles of the digestive tract. Ginger has also been found to have anti-inflammatory components. Ginger can be consumed raw or added to teas, curries, or sauces.

Olives have been shown to reduce nausea because of the presence of tannins, which ease nausea because of the mouth-drying effects caused by the tannins. Soda crackers help with nausea in a similar manner.

Pregnant Women in Cambodia Should Resist Chewing Tobacco is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

“Secondhand smoke in children is not just bad for respiratory issues, as has been previously described by other researchers,” said John Anthony Bauer, Ph.D., the study’s senior co-author and principal investigator at Nationwide Children’s Hospital & Research Institute at Ohio State University in Columbus.

“Our data support the view that cardiovascular effects of secondhand smoke in children are important, particularly for the very young and those who are obese. We had not investigated the impact of obesity in previous studies,” he continued.

Bauer and colleagues recruited American boys and girls, including 52 toddlers (ages 2 to 5 years) and 107 adolescents (ages 9 to 18 years). The study included black, white, and Hispanic children, including obese toddlers and adolescents.

The researchers found that there was a link between the amount of secondhand smoke exposure and a marker of vascular injury in toddlers, and this link was two times greater in toddlers who were obese. They also found that obese adolescents exposed to secondhand smoke had two times the evidence of vascular injury compared to normal-weight adolescents.

In addition, toddlers had four times the risk of secondhand smoke exposure when compared to adolescents, despite having similar reported home exposures. Toddlers exposed to secondhand smoke had a 30 percent reduction in circulating vascular endothelial progenitor cells, a cell type involved in repair and maintaining a healthy blood vessel network.

“The changes we detected in these groups of children are similar to changes that are well recognized risks for heart disease in adults,” Bauer said. “This suggests that some aspects of adult heart disease may be initiated in early childhood, where prevention strategies may have great long-term impact.”

Bauer and colleagues determined the extent of secondhand smoke exposures and, via blood samples, analyzed vascular injury markers and inflammation for each child. They also measured the numbers of circulating vascular endothelial progenitor cells. They obtained height, weight, blood pressure, and socioeconomic information for each child studied.

Many forms of cardiovascular disease start in childhood, and at least a quarter of children in the United States are exposed to secondhand smoke. Researchers tried to determine if children exposed to secondhand smoke had measurable changes in markers of cardiovascular disease and if some children, particularly obese children, were at greater risk of these problems.

“We do know that secondhand smoke as well as smoking causes increased oxidation and inflammation,” Bauer said. “Separately, other studies within the past few years have shown that obesity is a physiological condition of chronic low-grade inflammation, and that this can lead to vascular damage. We think that the two factors together (e.g., smoke exposures plus obesity) may interact to amplify the degree of inflammation or vascular cell damage that occurs.”

Bauer and colleagues looked at a cross-section of children at one point in time. Whether these differences progress or change over time as the children grow is unknown.

“Our findings add to the importance of eliminating smoking and related exposures, especially for children, and obese children may need to be even more protected from these exposures,” Bauer said.

Co-authors are Judith Groner, M.D.; Hong Huang, M.D., Ph.D.; Bing Han, Ph.D.; and Bethany Hashiguchi, M.S. The National Institutes of Health funded the study.

Secondhand Smoke Exposure Worse for Toddlers and Obese Children is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

Science Daily reports that studies have consistently found that prenatal cigarette smoke exposure is associated with increased rates of behavior problems, irritability, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, the risk of violent offenses, conduct disorder, adolescent onset of drug dependence, and the risk for criminal arrest in offspring. This study adds another potential negative outcome to the list of reasons for mothers to stop smoking while pregnant.

Most of the effects of tobacco either during pregnancy or on postnatal outcomes are attributed to nicotine. However, smoking is associated with reduced monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) activity, enzymes that degrade brain neurotransmitters in smokers. Prenatal smoke exposure-induced low MAO-A activity in fetal life may dysregulate brain neurotransmission, creating a potential vulnerability to develop behavioral disorders later in life. This dysregulation can occur with or without interaction with nicotine’s effect on the developing brain.

French scientists compared blood biomarkers of MAO-A activity in smoking and non-smoking pregnant women and in the cord blood of their newborns. They also assessed the newborns’ comfort level during their first 48 hours of life. They found that MAO-A activity is reduced both in pregnant smokers and in their newborns. The newborns of smoking mothers also showed significantly more discomfort than those of non-smoking mothers, potentially related to MAO-A inhibition.

Corresponding author Dr. Ivan Berlin explained that this paper’s findings "may have implications for future research because it proposes a biological explanation for the previously demonstrated relationship between smoking during pregnancy and behavioral disorders in the offspring."

"We know that maternal smoking can negatively affect a newborn in many ways, such as contributing to low birth weight. Berlin and colleagues provide new evidence that the newborns of mothers who smoke experience more behavioral discomfort, and they suggest a mechanism that helps to explain the cause of this discomfort," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry.

Although additional studies are needed, this work highlights the importance of targeting pregnant women for help to stop smoking

Maternal Smoking Can Increase Level of Discomfort in Newborns is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment

In a recent Science Daily release, researchers produced new estimates from five national surveys which include measure of binge, hazardous and dependent drinking, illicit drug use and mental health.

In the UK, previous estimates suggested that 250-350,000 children were living with problem drug users and 780,000-1.3 million were living with problem drinkers. These findings were based on those individuals seeking treatment and researchers argue that these numbers fail to capture the actual picture.

A new study funded by Action on Addiction and the Wates Foundation and conducted by Dr. Victoria Manning and colleagues at the National Addiction Centre, included a secondary analysis of national household surveys that allowed for a focus on parenting and substance use.

According to new figures, approximately 3.4 million children in the UK live with at least one binge drinking parent. Another 2.6 million children live with a hazardous drinker and around one million live with a parent who uses illicit drugs.

For drug use risk, about 335,000 children live with a drug dependent user, 72,000 with an injecting drug user and 108,000 with an adult who has overdosed. Researchers suggest the risk of harm may increase for the 500,000 children living with a parent or parents who have both mental health and substance misuse problems.

Manning said in Science Daily: "In order to meet the needs of both parental substance misusers and their children, we first need to understand the true nature and scale of the problem. Without knowing the number of potentially at-risk families, we are unable to assist them until they come to the attention of agencies at crisis point."
 

Children at Risk in Homes with Substance Abusing Parents is a post from: Drug Addiction Treatment