Smoking During Pregnancy
Linked to Mental Illness
Excerpt By Emma Hitt, PhD, Reuters Health

ATLANTA (Reuters Health) - Women who continue to smoke after they know they are pregnant may be more likely to be mentally ill than non-smoking women, according to new preliminary findings.

Dr. Louise H. Flick of St. Louis University in Missouri and colleagues reported the findings here this week at the American Public Health Association's (APHA) annual meeting.

According to the researchers, in general, people with mental illness are nearly three times as likely to smoke as people without mental illness. They wanted to determine whether smoking during pregnancy might indicate a need for psychiatric testing.

The investigators evaluated 253 women, all of whom participated in the federal Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutritional supplementation program, to determine whether they had or ever had any of 19 psychiatric disorders.

Of the women, 38% had a history of a psychiatric disorder, 31% had a current disorder, 30% smoked during pregnancy and 15% were dependent on tobacco.

About 61% of the women were black, and about one in five were younger than 19.

``We found that women in our low income sample who continued to smoke after they knew they were pregnant were almost five times more likely to have a current psychiatric illness than were women who had not smoked in the last year,'' Flick told Reuters Health.

Depression and post-traumatic stress disorder were the most common psychiatric disorders seen among the women, Flick noted.

``These findings may alert providers of prenatal care of the need to screen for psychiatric problems when they see women who are not able to stop smoking in pregnancy,'' Flick said.

``It is not a perfect indicator of problems, as nearly half of smokers will not have a disorder, but it can be a clue to look further,'' she added.

Reference Source 89

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