The Need for Perinatal Substance Abuse
This topic is a little off of my usual theme of chronic pain management but this has always been an issue that is very important to me. I have developed denial management and relapse prevention components for several agencies that worked with chemically dependent pregnant women. I’ve always believed that addiction treatment combined with regular prenatal visits improved the chances for a healthy baby.
Today a friend of mine wrote to share the good news from Kaiser about the results of their program to help with perinatal substance abuse. I’m including a little information from this study that was published in the Journal of Perinatology Advance Online Publication 26 June 2008. If you want to review the entire report go to http://www.nature.com/jp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/jp200870a.html.
The coordination of care between mental health and obstetric professionals enhances the service delivery model for addressing substance abuse in pregnancy. Early Start’s replicable model of integrating substance abuse treatment with prenatal care is cost-effective and significantly decreases negative birth outcomes as well as maternal morbidity. The women and babies served by Early Start are healthier; therefore, the impact of the program reaches beyond them to also positively influence the health and well-being of the community at large, and consequently must also be considered from a public health perspective. The results of this study reflect the importance of widespread implementation of this model of care as a national standard.
To learn more about chronic pain management please check out our website at www.addiction-free.com and go to our Publications page and check out my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. You can also check out our Articles page to download my free article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Treatment.
