%0 Journal Article
%T Substance abuse in pregnant women. Experiences from a special child welfare clinic in Norway
%A Bj£¿rg Hjerkinn
%A Morten Lindb£¿k
%A Elin Rosvold
%J BMC Public Health
%D 2007
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2458-7-322
%X Retrospective cohort study. Data was gathered from the medical records of all 102 women seen in the clinic in the period between 1992 and 2002. The study includes 59 out of 60 women that were followed until their children were two years old or placed in alternative care, and a comparison group of twice the size. Both groups were presented with a questionnaire concerning both the pregnancy and health and socio-economic issues.Four (4.5 percent) of the women that completed their pregnancies did not manage to reduce their substance abuse. All the others reduced their substance abuse considerably. The odds ratio for stopping substance abuse within the first trimester was significantly associated with stopping smoking (O.R. 9.7) or being victims of rape (O.R. 5.3).A low cost and low threshold initiative organised as a child welfare clinic may support women with substance abuse problems in their efforts to stop or reduce their substance abuse during pregnancy.Alcohol and other substances taken by pregnant women can harm the unborn baby [1-3]. Pregnant women who continue their substance abuse often give birth prematurely, the infants are often small for their gestational age, and they have more perinatal incidents. Despite evidence for a wide range of negative consequences for the pregnant women and their children, specific programs addressing this group did not begin appearing until the late 1980ies [4]. Female alcoholics and substance abusers have been met with anger and blame, which led to a lack of treatment services. In recent years, models of treatment have been developed [5,6], which have proved to be clinically and economically effective [7-9].A special child welfare clinic (SCWC) was set up in the city of Kristiansand in 1994 to work with substance abusing pregnant women and mothers with young children, with the aim of helping these women stop their substance abuse without replacement therapy [10]. Pregnancy is not an indication for opioid replacement therapy in N
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/322