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Prenatal cannabis exposure associated with mental disorders in children
- 1-6 4y agoWhy are pregnant women smoking weed to begin with?
- westmeal 4y agoPeople are nuts.
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- nth_degree 4y agoIt can help with nausea.
- 404mm 4y agoOne response I received was: “weed is natural and comes from the Earth”. It’s absolutely mind boggling how stupid people can be.
- withinboredom 4y agoAnd water comes from burning fossil fuels too, but I doubt that water would be good for you. Ibuprofen comes from the bark of tree IIRC, but that pill is a lot better than the soup you’d have to eat to get not nearly the same effect. Everything is natural. I really hate that argument.
- 404mm 4y agoIn moments when I’m not speechless, I usually just say “and so does Mercury and Uranium“.
- Apocryphon 4y agoThose are minerals, not plants. A better counterpart would be nightshade and castor plant oil seeds.
- nkozyra 4y ago> Ibuprofen comes from the bark of tree IIRC This is salicylic acid, in a number of tree barks but most abundantly in white willow. The medication form is aspirin or acetylsalicylic acid.
- vorpalhex 4y ago"So are sharks and volcanoes..."
- dekhn 4y agoTo steelman this argument (to the extent that I can): we can in fact attribute a great deal of harm to highly processed ingredients, while there are a number of plants and animals humans have lived with and eaten for millenia, and we've identified the natural products that are poisonous. Weed is one of the plants that humans have coexisted with and consumed for millenia, and societies with high weed consumption don't appear to be significantly sicker than ones that don't. (I can't think of a way to steelman around the fact that there are many toxic plant and animal substances, and some highly processed ingredients are completely harmless)
- gfdsgfdsf 4y agomorning sickness, the alternatives such as zofran come with their own complications
- scythe 4y agoIt's about 5% of pregnant women, while about 14% of women report smoking cannabis, and the rate is significantly higher under age 55: https://news.gallup.com/poll/284135/percentage-americans-smoke-marijuana.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/284135/percentage-americans-smo... So probably about 20% of women who may become pregnant smoke marijuana, and 75% of them stop when pregnant, before adjusting for whether they are aware of the pregnancy. There are usually a few irresponsible individuals in any group.
- klyrs 4y agoThis is a backlash from anti-cannabis disinformation. People were told lies about how dangerous it is for decades, and now people don't know what to believe.
- Maursault 4y ago
- asveikau 4y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=cannabis+psychosis https://www.google.com/search?q=cannabis+psychosis People are not making this up. It's a risk that needs to be weighed. Acknowledging this fact is not the same as being in favor of prohibition or criminalization or saying it'll happen to everyone.
- Maursault 4y agoI disagree. I think there is a lot of misinformation flooding the nets and the news, and this is provably true. Psychosis is a pretty obvious condition, and it was not difficult to observe psychosis thousands of years ago. Cannabis has been in wide global use since at least 8000BC, and yet... there just historically aren't enough crazy people for this to remotely pass the stiff test.
- asveikau 4y agoI've personally seen someone with bipolar disorder enter a months long psychotic episode after exposure to small amounts of THC. That is how I know it's a thing. It happens. I think psychotic illnesses are complex and there is no one cause. THC can be a factor. This is also what the Google results I linked you to said
- superkuh 4y agoUnless they regularly entered bipolar episodes after imbibing a small amount of THC I'm not sure you're making a claim here. You saw it happen one time to a person who also goes into bipolar incidents without it and now it's the THC's fault? It isn't a very convincing anecdote. I bet they drank water before the bipolar episode too.
- asveikau 4y ago
- adamrezich 4y agoI asked a then-pregnant still-weed-smoking coworker of my fiancée about this, she said "it isn't that bad for the baby, at least compared to alcohol or meth", and another coworker (female, roughly same age) agreed that "meth and booze are really bad for pregnant women, but weed not so much". from the sound of things (this was on a car trip to a nearby Native American reservation where the then-pregnant girl's parents lived), among this strata of people at least, if you get pregnant, you should definitely stop drinking and consuming meth, but weed isn't a big deal. no idea how this entered the public subconscious but there you have it.
- tartoran 4y agoAt least they’re not okay with meth and alcohol while pregnant… Or they never consume meth and use the ruse to normalize weed consumption. I my books nothing is worth risking for the baby’s health
- Dylan16807 4y ago> I my books nothing is worth risking for the baby’s health That's a bad book. Everything has risk. If you think you're not risking, you're deluding yourself. Trying to avoid "unnecessary" risks is only marginally better. You need to know how big the risks actually are, or your biases will mislead you.
- throwuxiytayq 4y agoAddiction, self-medication (eg. pain/nausea relief), escapism, peer pressure. To name a few. I used to be sceptical about weed addiction, and then it happened to me. It was relatively difficult to quit even though the habit was severely impacting my work and social life. In the end not having any weed around helped a lot. If you have an easy endless supply, boy, you're in trouble. If you enjoy weed, consider having a strict limit (eg. max 1 smoke per week). If you smoke every day, you might find yourself unable to quit when need arises (eg. pregnancy, yours or your partner's).
- mosseater 4y agoAlso, you know, doctor recommended medication. And not just the "weed doctors" do it either, my conservative neurologist even told me to smoke THC heavy marijuana. I smoke every day. It absolutely impacts my work and social life, as without it I'm a painful ball of irritation that would have to be on opiates to get anything done.
- Karunamon 4y agoJust to be clear, he told you to smoke? There are other ingestion methods, including vaping, that don't come with a ton of other health risks.
- asveikau 4y agoI think it's more addictive than people think. I've known a few people who I think have a problem, but they become violently confrontational if you say it might be addictive for some. I may get comments and downvotes along these lines. I guess some people may also have some exposure from before they realize they're pregnant. That probably also happens with things like alcohol. I think I've heard some say that's not a big issue, though.
- pier25 4y agoWhen someone mentions addiction people think heroin addiction, but yeah people can become psychologically dependent on cannabis too. I know I did, many years ago.
- xkcd-sucks 4y ago> but they become violently confrontational if you say it might be addictive for some Going out on a limb here but it might be in the same spirit as a similar response to "Strong encryption is for child abuse and terrorism" / "Bittorrent is for pirating movies" in that it's true in some cases but is used as a popular discourse wedge to promote governmental overreach
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- mcculley 4y agoPresumably, for the same reasons they drink alcohol and consume caffeine. Most parents are not thinking ahead.
- honkycat 4y agoIt helps with nausea and pain, both of which are symptoms pregnant people experience.
- lame-robot-hoax 4y agoFull title that wouldn’t fit: Prenatal cannabis exposure associated with mental disorders in children that persist into early adolescence
- sammalloy 4y agoI don’t know, it seems equally likely that mothers with pre-existing mental disorders self-medicate with cannabis to self-soothe. There have been numerous studies showing such things. For example, why is nicotine use highly correlated with mental illness? Nobody is saying that cigarettes are associated with mental disorders.
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- scythe 4y agoUnpaywalled paper on the same data, showing findings: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0250235 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- stefan_ 4y agoAnd wouldn't you know it, the title does not match the findings: > Among these 6, none increased the odds of crossing the threshold for clinically significant symptoms by itself. The linked article bizarrely focuses on cannabis, but they looked at "unplanned pregnancies", "maternal alcohol, marijuana and tobaccos use in early pregnancy", "pregnancy complications" and "birth complications". The only finding: > Children exposed to multiple common, adverse prenatal events showed dose-dependent increases in broad, clinically significant psychopathology at age 9–10. Where is the article lecturing us about the dangers of unplanned pregnancies so everyone can kneejerk react to it? (Also, why is this study mixing in alcohol use, which is of course already strongly proven to lead to all kinds of disorders..)
- dekhn 4y agoThe only way I could be sane as a scientist (I'm an ex-scientist) is by ignoring large parts of the literature. In fact, I think one of the greatest skills a scientist can have is to know when not to read a paper or even really consider the title. My own work in science was deeply quantitative and the bar for evidence was very high. Nearly every time I read a clinical paper (with the exception of professionally run clinical trials with a good statistical design and rigid adherence to protocols), it takes only a little time to find an "invalidating statement"- a description of methodology or a core assumption or a common mistake- for me to realize that investing further time is simply not worth it. It doesn't mean that I necessarily believe the opposite of the paper, but rather fall back on my own prior assumptions/null hypothesis explanation.
- bhk 4y agoIt's dangerous to impute causality here given the potential for confounding environmental factors. Consider the chief finding that multiple such exposures had a more significant effect than individual exposure ... and what kind of home environment would tend to be associated with multiple of these exposures, including unplanned pregnancy, and use of alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco during pregnancy. Also, note that this article is a press release from the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
- tedivm 4y agoThe amount of research over last decade has been huge, even outside of this. It used to be the only way companies could research cannabis was by getting really crappy samples from a government grow house, but with legalization the supply of research samples and the quality of researchers willing to work on it has grown considerably. This is a direct safety issue. I used to moderator one of the bigger cannabis subreddits and one of the bigger questions that always came up was whether it was safe to smoke while pregnant. The answer I always gave was that we just don't know, and so it should be avoided. The lack of research though meant that people couldn't make informed decisions, and the stereotype around cannabis being safe meant that people did not always err on the side of caution. Now there is something concrete we can point to.
- VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
- jjulius 4y ago>... weed people... Your bias is showing.
- tedivm 4y agoIf that's what you think my response says then you didn't read it at all. I literally said that I would tell people "we just don't know, and so it should be avoided". Not "we don't know". I said "We don't know, so avoid it". That's a very different statement than what you're quoting- literally the exact opposite of your "it's not safe" quote.
- dTal 4y agoIt does seem like a weak reply to me - it's too equivocal. "We don't know" implies that it's anybody's guess, and that it should be avoided only out of an abundance of caution. Some people will interpret that response as "there's no evidence it's bad, so it's probably fine." In fact there's plenty of evidence it's bad, both direct (the linked study is not the only one) and indirect (we know that smoking in pregnancy is bad, and that drugs affect the fetus, and that fetuses are sensitive). If you polled medical professionals, they would all say it's probably bad. The likelihood that it's perfectly fine is small.
- michaelwww 4y agoI read this right after I got back from the marijuana store where a pregnant woman was buying weed. It made me uncomfortable. It just seems risky to me to take intoxicants while the babies brain is forming.
- tedivm 4y agoI think the real problem- and something I'm hoping more research can help with- is that marijuana is a medicine for a lot of people. It prevents seizures, reduces or stops migraines, and (this one is really important considering the context) reduces nausea. Sometimes people have to balance between a bunch of crappy options. This isn't always the case, of course, but it's hard to judge what someone is going through from the outside so I tend to just give the benefit of the doubt. What would be nice would be if we could figure out why cannabis helps with these issues and provide a more direct treatment.
- kayodelycaon 4y agoA lot of medications need to be discontinued during pregnancy. All of the women I know who are bipolar absolutely do not want to become pregnant because they would need to stop taking all of their medication.
- tedivm 4y agoYeah- and with a lack of research available there are a lot of people who limited their cannabis intake or didn't reduce at all during pregnancy. A lot of this comes down to balancing risks- which is absolutely something that should be done while consulting a doctor. If someone is so nauseous they can't even maintain weight, let alone gain that healthy baby weight, then it's possible a small amount of marijuana may be more healthy for them despite the risks. To be clear though I'm just advocating a lot more research on the subject, and personally would err on the side of caution when it comes to things that aren't heavily researched.
- tomatotomato37 4y agoTo add to that it isn't just "serious" prescription medications that may need to be discontinued; a variety of OTCs from Aspirin to PeptoBismol can also pose a risk to anyone expecting.
- darth_avocado 4y agoI’m glad this research is being done. I don’t use cannabis, but I also don’t frown upon it. However some of the conversations on the use of cannabis recently have changed from “it’s a drug, but it isn’t that bad” to “it is completely harmless”. Which in my opinion is very dangerous and could harm entire populations before we have enough research. In my opinion, it should be considered similar category as alcohol, cigarettes, fat and sugar, a national health issue and research needs to happen asap on various short term and long term effects.
- itsoktocry 4y ago>However some of the conversations on the use of cannabis recently have changed from “it’s a drug, but it isn’t that bad” to “it is completely harmless”. Or even worse, "it's nothing but beneficial!". And yes, I'm a semi-regular "user"
- xattt 4y agoThe same sentiment can be applied to current psychedelics research.
- taurath 4y agoCan you post a source for any claim that theyre harmless? I don’t think any reputable researcher has ever said that, but they have started talking about potential for positive effects, which is a far cry from “if you take this it will ruin your life”.
- kevinpet 4y agoYou're missing the point of the conversation if you think this is about "reputable researchers".
- tsol 4y agoI don't think there are any researchers saying marijuana is anything but beneficial. It's every day people. Same thing for psychedelics. There was a thread on LSD the other day and I had to point out twice that HPPD happens as a result, and is a disorder that can cause significant mental distress. Honestly I think it only does a disservice to the cause to make claims like that
- uptownfunk 4y agoCould someone help me understand the mechanism of action that triggers mental problems from cannabis consumption? I recall it being a trigger for psychosis in some cases.
- jazzyjackson 4y agoonly spitballing, but everyone has intrusive thoughts, and we tune them out to various degrees weed can be a kind of thought dis-inhibitor, and can take any thought that crosses your mind and make it the most important thought you've ever had (see also: thinking your stoned ideas are revolutionary inventions, until you sober up and realize you've re-invented the tea kettle)
- endisneigh 4y agoWeed is bad for you, what a shocker. Like all drugs you have to weigh the positive effects with the negative. Generally it's bad to do most rec drugs if pregnant or around kids.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoCannabis is a vasodilator, among many other things.
- dekken_ 4y agoWater is bad for you in sufficient quantities.
- endisneigh 4y agowhat does water have to do with anything?
- dekken_ 4y agoThe point is that weed isn't just bad for you, it depends on your condition and the dosage.
- staringback 4y agoDo you need weed to survive?
- dr_dshiv 4y ago“ 6 exposures (unplanned pregnancy; maternal alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco use early in pregnancy; pregnancy complications; and birth complications) independently associated with significant but small increases in CBCL total score. Among these 6, none increased the odds of crossing the threshold for clinically significant symptoms by itself. However, odds of exceeding this threshold became significant with 2 exposures (OR = 1.86, 95% CI 1.47–2.36), and increased linearly with each level of exposure (OR = 1.39, 95% CI 1.31–1.47), up to 3.53-fold for ≥4 exposures versus none”
- ttpphd 4y agoHuh. Weird that from that result the focus of the conversation is on cannabis.
- tyree731 4y agoWell, most of the other factors were pretty agreeable, with marijuana being a somewhat surprising result.
- viridian 4y agoAlcohol and tobacco cessation are heavily pushed on you the second you begin to try to conceive. Doctors tell you there is no safe amount of alcohol. The only place weed was even mentioned to me was in the Mayo clinic guide to pregnancy, once. You are a dozen times more likely to get the smoking lecture and hundreds of times more likely to get the booze lecture at any given time.
- ttpphd 4y agoWhat about the unplanned pregnancy lecture? Seems like exactly the kind of stressful life event that would exacerbate maternal health!
- jonhohle 4y agoIIRC, earlier research by Bledsoe and Davies at UWashington found lots of confounding factors for maternal drug use. For example, alcohol use by crack users during pregnancy was effectively universal making it likely that the crack-baby epidemic in the 90s was most likely FAS. I believe they also found no correlation between marijuana use and developmental delays.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoConsuming weed during pregnancy is against Tupac's Thug Life principles.
- version_five 4y ago"Don't get me started / my mother smoked so goddamn much when she was pregnant I'm surprised I ain't retarded"?
- pier25 4y agoI know my mother smoked cannabis when she was pregnant back in the 70s (hippie parents etc). Maybe it wasn't related to that, but I did experience a number of mental disorders from my childhood to my late 20s.
- metamateme 4y agoHow could you possibly control for the major confounder of “having the kind of parent who would intentionally subject their unborn child to THC”?
- JamesBarney 4y agoThese association studies are near useless. Every positive behavior and positive outcome are correlated, and every bad behavior and outcome are correlated. Mothers who get high during their pregnancy are different from mothers who don't. A more informed one would be looking at women with seizures that are treated with cannabis and comparing them to women with the same disorder who aren't. There are still differences but they'd be smaller.
- moomoo11 4y agoIs this really surprising? Any time I had used cannabis I felt like my IQ dropped 20-30 points and I would lose hours of my day where it was difficult for me to learn. It made doing household chores not terrible, but brought out a lot of panic inducing moments and erratic behavior. I was thinking about a 100k other things while doing one thing. Later on I realized I wasn't even doing that one thing so well. Anything that drops cognitive abilities for a moment is going to be awful long term and especially for babies. I know a lot of people think cannabis isn't bad, but it is intellectually dishonest to disregard the broader effects of effects on cognition. I say that as someone who used to smoke a ton of cannabis. Not having to rely on drugs to find calmness has made a profound change in my life, and I can't believe that I used to turn to weed, alcohol, etc. when all I needed to be permanently (key word) happy was already present within me. Prior, when the effects went away I spent just as much time craving and suffering heavily. That being said I don't think it should be criminalized or anything like that. It is up to adults to do whatever, but it is useful to be honest as well. Not everyone uses it for epilepsy, none of the dispensaries here sell CBD products. Its all high THC products meant to "fuck you up"
- subpixel 4y agoSounds like you and I have similar reactions to marijuana. From “that smells great” to “I’m talking, but I can’t remember what I was going to say” in just three tokes. What I’ve come to understand though is that for many other people, marijuana makes them feel great - sharp, alert, at ease and in control. I can empathize with the idea that “this can’t be bad!” even while acknowledging you’d have to be very deluded to smoke anything or consume any psychoactive drug while pregnant just because definitive proof of harm is lacking.
- HereIGoAgain 4y agoPeople also shouldn't forget the effects that long term use has on mental health.
- Gatsky 4y agoThis is going to be confounded surely... parents who use cannabis during pregnancy are not 'the same as everyone else except they use cannabis'. They probably, or might I say, almost certainly, have higher rates of psychiatric disorders, the propensity for which they pass onto their children. So the size of the effect will be less than what is claimed, but in any case don't use cannabis during pregnancy.
- bendbro 4y ago
- mensetmanusman 4y agoThese things are a type of natural experiment. The child is a secondary absorber of unhealthy parental decisions, some less obvious than others.
- tossout9999 4y agoMy wife uses cannabis for pain management and she used it through pregnancy. Her OBGYN was aware and didn't recommend against it. Our daughter is 6 now and we still think about it. Anything she has trouble with, I always wonder; did we do this to her? Though I don't know that there was a better choice available. Are there effective painkillers that don't have risks for developing babies? Is good for a developing baby to be receiving constant stress hormones from a mother in intense pain?
- jasonhansel 4y ago
- WFHRenaissance 4y ago
- sethammons 4y ago> In 2018, 4.7% of pregnant women reported cannabis use and 5.4% did in 2019 Holy cow, one in twenty woman are admitting to getting high when pregnant. I wouldn't have ever thought it that high. But then again, both my and my wife's moms smoked pot while pregnant.
- tartoran 4y ago> But then again, both my and my wife's moms smoked pot while pregnant. Marijuana is a lot stronger nowadays and the effects could be amplified beyond a threshold that causes permanent damage
- double_nan 4y agoAn interesting point to view at any drug (including alcohol and even coffee) is presence of social stigmas. Coffee has very mild (almost none) social stigma associated with its consumption: ppl would recommend to drink less if you are obviously overconsume it. Alcohol has somewhat harsh social stigma starting from certain point and actually some encouragement in small doses. Cannabis seems like has no stigma (outside of some circles) in small doses and somewhat mild for overconsumption. No research, just my observation, but i would like to see one.
- brutus1213 4y agoIn Canada, we have neighbours who smoke weed and cultivate plants. It is pretty terrible .. our yards are so small and close together, we smell weed all the time. Pretty much since the laws have relaxed, we have not been able to use our yard in peace. We are concerned as we are exposing our kids to second hand smoke. The effects can't be good. Million dollar houses and this is the crap we get.
- wudangmonk 4y agoHow much smoke can a few people smoking cannabis possibly produce, and what tiny fraction of that can get into your house?. I bet you wouldn't complain as much about your neighbors burning wood/coal during a barbecue and that releases way more toxins that also can't be good. If people are going to smoke something I would rather them do it in their house. Even though cannabis is legal where I live I have never been into a public space where people where stinking up the place. The same cannot be said for tabacco. I'm glad at least most of the cannabis users seem to be doing it in their homes.
- steve76 4y ago[dead]
- kapilkchaurasia 4y ago
- kapilkchaurasia 4y ago
- greesil 4y agoMissing from he abstract is effect size and variables controlled for. It's almost like they want me to read the paper or something.
- didibus 4y agoDuring pregnancy I'd assume almost any exposure to anything that is not essential nutrients, pure air and pure water is bad to some measurable effect if we could measure it. Even caffeine has negative measurable effects.
- xyst 4y agowell - that explains like half of my childhood friends growing up. Anxious, ADHD, depression, … They were on a laundry list of SSRIs and mood stabilizers and they were only 15-17 y/o
- jokethrowaway 4y agoGood to see more research on cannabis but I find studies by association to be incredibly easy to push in one direction or another. I'd be more inclined to believe that parents who smoke cannabis during pregnancy are more likely to be bad parents or live in a bad environment, which result into issues with their kids 15 years later. Or maybe they keep smoking around their kids over their lifespan and that prolonged exposure is causing problems in the adolescence. I find it hard to believe cannabis crossing the placenta would be causing issues 15 years after exposure and not affecting the children before. Plenty of young kids are diagnosed (even overdiagnosed if we want to talk about the subject) with behavioural issues. Why is this study not finding any evidence of that? That would be way stronger evidence.
- gilded-lilly 4y agoOne of my pet peeves is the oft repeated slogan “it’s not addictive”. And by definition, that’s true. But neither is Methamphetamine. But people still throw it around like it’s some kind of scientific blessing that you can’t form a dependency. Also, I think the true cost of marijuana is the opportunity cost - it’s not just what it does to you, it’s what it takes from you - your motivation, potential etc. And it’s really quite toxic to your long term mental health, in devilishly insidious ways - and is usually accompanied by aggressively-defended self deceptions.
- mburee 4y agoOn the other hand coffee is addictive, but I have yet so see someone go down the drain mentally for drinking coffee all the time. Sure, not a lot of pot users do, but there's the minority that seems to spend 80% of their free time smoking.
- gilded-lilly 4y agoI’ve noticed this too. I think “habit forming” might be a better phrase - coupled with potential impacts to life, divided into positive and negative impacts (positive such as tooth decay, impacts on physical and mental health; negative such as lack of motivation, reduced general ambition, lack of initiative for non drug related activities, reduced concentration, altered perspective and so on) might be a better framework. Cannabis might not be as obviously life ruining as hard drugs such as alcohol, meth and heroin - but it’s no less debilitating for society to have people re-orient themselves away from traditional goal-seeking behavior (such as finding a job or starting a family).
- thih9 4y agoThere are people who spend 80% of their time with a cup of coffee; it's not without side effects either, they risk e.g.: increased blood pressure, anxiety, trouble sleeping.
- valtism 4y agoI don't understand what you mean by saying that Cannabis and Meth are not addictive by definition. I think that they are both dependency-inducing and addictive as drugs.
- fedeb95 4y agoI can't read the whole article, but just by opening its link it changes from a definitive conclusion to a "may affect". It wouldn't surprise me if weak correlation was presented as causation.
- LatteLazy 4y ago"Associated with" is basically meaningless in human or health studies. I'm not saying there isn't a causal link here, there probably is. I'm just saying this isn't science, it's excel. So we should do some actual science and know rather than just creating an ever bigger list of "associated" risks that no one can remember or compare or make much use of.
- mancerayder 4y agoA lot of people are driving on it, too. I'm seeing a record number of red lights being run in Manhattan of all places. General disorder or correlation?