Cyp 3.1 Narrative Report

The quality of life for these children is unfortunately not the best. They can have limb, facial, and organ defects, and will have stunted physical growth throughout young adult life. Prenatal exposure can also have a negative effect on motor skills, especially fine motor tasks such as writing and balancing. The disabilities depend on the mother and her drinking habits. The children of heavy drinkers while pregnant, have many more developmental problems than of those whose mother was a light drinker. The most common problems among these children with alcohol exposure are with balance, coordination, and how they are able to play and handle a ball.

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders describes the wide range of effects that can occur if a mother drank alcohol during pregnancy. These effects include physical abnormalities, mental problems, and/or learning disabilities with possible lifelong implications. The child affected is more likely to have trouble in school, problems with the law, participate in high risk behaviors and/or problems with drugs or alcohol. The most severe form of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders is known as fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).

Other symptoms that lead to a Fetal Alcohol Syndrome diagnosis cannot be identified at birth but may be recognized later on in life when these features become more prominent; these would include any cognitive or developmental symptoms that may not be noticeable at birth or in the early stages of life. Cognitive or developmental symptoms can cause problems as the child grows older and they begin to integrate into their community and start school. A more serious outcome of prenatal alcohol exposure is miscarriage, stillbirth, or a baby born prematurely. Premature babies’ lungs are not yet fully developed by the time they need to start using them so they may not be able to breathe on their own yet. They also may not have enough fat on them yet to regulate their body temperature or have heart defects like ventricular septal defect or atrial septal

Pre-natal alcohol exposure is an established cause of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), which is now recognized as the most common preventable cause of mental impairment in North America (Popova et al., 2013). Individuals with FASD experience a wide range of neurological and psychological disabilities caused by permanent brain alterations (Petrenko et al., 2014). The adverse health outcomes that arise from FASD have lifelong implications and pose a significant burden on the Canadian health care system (Popova et al., 2013). From a public health perspective, FASD presents a unique and complex challenge due to the specialized needs of those diagnosed with FASD, and the complexities of maternal alcohol use.

FAS is defined as a medical diagnosis involving four key features: alcohol exposure, growth deficiently, certain facial features, and brain damage. Infants who have been exposed to prenatal alcohol rarely show all symptoms of the medical condition FAS. Other terms have been used to describe the implication involved with FAS. Frequently used terms are: Partial Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Alcohol-related Neurodevelopmental Disorder and Alcohol-related Birth Defects. A child with Partial Fetal Alcohol syndrome exhibits only some of the physical signs of FAS and will likely have both learning and behavioral difficulties. A child suffering from Alcohol-related Neurodevelopmental Disorder will demonstrate signs of neural damage, problems with memory, poor social skills, and learning difficulties. Children diagnosed with

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) refers to the physical and mental disabilities or abnormalities resulting from maternal alcohol use while fetal alcohol effects (FAE) or partial FAS refer to other abnormalities such as social, sensory, or behavioral. The uniformity of FASD is utilized to include those suffering from substantial impairment to include not only those with FAS but also comprising alcohol neuro-developmental disorder (ARND) and/or alcohol related birth defects (ARBD). Estimates suggest that individuals having the complete range of partial FAS or ARBD equates to “at least 10 in 1000…translating to 40,000 children born every year…and far more common than other more well known developmental disabilities, such as Down syndrome and autism”

Jones and David W. Smith, two pediatric dysmorphologists. Jones and Smith, along with a group of pediatricians at the University of Washington Medical School, helped to summarize the morphological defects that can affect children born to alcoholic mothers. Jones and Smith observed a group of eight children throughout their adolescence to see the long-term effects of alcohol exposure. Jones and Smith explained that “of the eight children, four of them were severely, mentally handicapped and the other four were moderately, mentally handicapped” (Cooper

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) was found, named and treated in the late 1960’s. The term “Fetal Alcohol Syndrome” is used to describe a lifelong set of physical, mental and neurobehavioral birth defects associated with alcohol consumption during pregnancy.

Even if all three are criteria are required for the diagnosis of fetal alcohol syndrome, not all children that have been heavily exposed to prenatal alcohol present the three of them, meaning many will go misdiagnosed. In the present study, only 50% of the children that had been heavily exposed to alcohol during pregnancy presented all three characteristic criteria of fetal alcohol syndrome.

According to Webster, Magill-Evans, and Pei,”Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) refers to the diagnoses of damage caused to the fetus by alcohol exposure” (2012). It is the cause of abnormalities in children and can include effects such as communicating, socializing, controlling emotions, learning, remembering, understanding and following directions, and daily life skills. Some of the abnormalities caused by this disorder includes wide-set and narrow eyes, growth problems, and nervous system abnormalities. Having this disorder lasts forever so there is no cure for it; only treatment and medicine available to help with the symptoms. In this paper, I will touch base on the human development issues children develop due to this disorder such as sleep disruption, vision deficit, and sensory processing deficits. This disorder is of interest to me because I want to be informed on what effects the children undergo when they have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and hear studies elaborating on it. It is an interesting topic to me since I am uninformed of that disorder. It would also be of interest to me because learning about the effects they have can help me when working with a client that may have this disorder. It would be better for me to understand her and know where she is coming from. In the social work field I am going to be working with a lot of different people and I want to be well informed of everything and be aware of why people are how they are. It

Behavioral malformations can include attention deficit or hyperactivity, as well as impaired adaptive behavior, social skills, and social communication.2 A range of affected behavior is evident, with any degree of general impairment possible in intelligence, reflex development, motor coordination, and hyperactivity of muscle.1 Core deficits that are found in a majority of cases of prenatal alcohol exposure include deficits in attention, learning, memory, emotional dysregulation, and executive functioning, which

Symptoms can range from mild to severe.” There are many symptoms/causes of FAS such as: Growth retardation, Unique Facial features; almond shaped eyes, short, upturned nose, flattened cheeks, small jaw, thin upper lip, flattened philtrum, Nervous system problems; Mental retardation, hyperactivity, delayed development of gross motor skills and fine motor skills, impaired language development, memory problems, poor judgement, distractibility, impulsiveness, seizures, and problems with learning. Not only can children have all the following issues but when they’re born they can be premature, have a small skull, and have hearing disorders. That’s not even all the side effects of drinking when your pregnant! A child can suffer from ADD, psychosis, drug and alcohol abuse. Children that are FAS are more likely to be suspended in school, and a higher rate of FAS children end up involved in the criminal justice system. When a woman drinks alcohol while she is pregnant the alcohol travels through her blood stream and across the placenta reaching her fetus. An adult woman’s body can break down alcohol quicker but babies’ bodies are much smaller therefore the alcohol content is much higher in the baby’s

Alcohol-related birth defects that may be present to those born with FAS can easily be identified because of the cluster of characteristic features involving facial appearance, growth and brain damage. Children born to mothers that drink heavily in pregnancy may also have serious congenital birth defects such as :

When conveying the interview, it had become apparent that FAS initially starts affecting a child in their early years of life. During the interview, the respondent said ‘’we originally did not recognise that the child had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome’’. Moreover, that, ‘’If I had not had to go to work; then the child would not have attended pre-school but gone into school, when they would reach school age and at it would not have been recognised until then’’. These are direct quotes that enable me to answer one of my aims. Furthermore, research done by Medscape (2010) supports this as it states that diagnosing FAS is difficult as there is not one way of discovering if one has the disease. Medscape (2010) state that it cannot only be judged by blood

As a result of pregnant women drinking, there have been a profuse amount of children born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Armstrong and Abel confirm that it wasn’t until 1973