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Substance Use in Pregnancy Among Vulnerable Women Seeking Addiction and Parenting Support

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Abstract

Substance use during pregnancy is associated with obstetrical and fetal complications. Though use of some substances is discontinued during pregnancy, use of others persists. Our goal was to characterize substance-specific use and patterns of use throughout pregnancy among vulnerable women who attended an early intervention program for women with substance use issues. Through retrospective analyses of client records (1995–2016; N = 470), results indicated that the greatest number of women continued use of tobacco and cannabis for the duration of pregnancy (n = 232; 84.4% and n = 102; 60.0%, respectively), while the proportion of women continuing opioid use was relatively high (n = 33; 57.9%). Relapse rates were high for women who initially attempted to discontinue use of cocaine, crack cocaine, and heroin. Results can inform intervention and treatment by indicating which substances are more difficult to discontinue, as well as substances associated with high rates of relapse.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Prateek Lala for his very helpful revisions and suggestions early on in the production of this work.

Funding

This work was supported by the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, the Hospital for Sick Children as well as Mothercraft, Early Intervention Department.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Kiri A. Latuskie

  2. Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, Hospital for Sick Children, 555 University Avenue, Toronto, ON, M5G 1X8, Canada

    Kiri A. Latuskie, Tom Leibson & Shinya Ito

  3. Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Canada

    Naomi C. Z. Andrews & Debra J. Pepler

  4. Early Intervention Department, Mothercraft, Breaking the Cycle, 860 Richmond St. W, Suite 100, Toronto, ON, M6J 1C9, Canada

    Naomi C. Z. Andrews & Mary Motz

Authors
  1. Kiri A. Latuskie
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  2. Tom Leibson
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  3. Naomi C. Z. Andrews
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  4. Mary Motz
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  5. Debra J. Pepler
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  6. Shinya Ito
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Mary Motz or Shinya Ito.

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Ethics approval was obtained from the research ethics board at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada.

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The authors declare that they have no potential conflicts of interest.

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Latuskie, K.A., Leibson, T., Andrews, N.C.Z. et al. Substance Use in Pregnancy Among Vulnerable Women Seeking Addiction and Parenting Support. Int J Ment Health Addiction 17, 137–150 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-018-0005-7

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