Pregnant Women must Stay Away from Psychiatric Medication

Pregnant Women must Stay Away from Psychiatric Medication
By MHSAdmin on July 1, 2010
In order not to put their unborn-baby in health-risk, pregnant women must stay away from taking psychiatric medicines, a recently concluded biomedical study has warned. These medicines, if taken during pregnancy, may cause serious side effects in kids, the study finds.

“A range of serious side effects such as birth deformities, low birth weight,
premature birth, and development of neonatal withdrawal syndrome were reported in children under two years of age, most likely because of the mother’s intake of psychotropic medication during pregnancy,” says Lisa Aagard, Associate Professor of the University of Copenhagen. Aagard and Professor Ebbe Holme Hansard have jointly undertaken the study in which they examined a wide data collected from the Danish Medicines Agency.

The study-researchers had scrutinized all reports of adverse drug reactions of the Danish National database for the period from 1998 to 2007. Children up to the age 17 from birth were included in the study. Out of 2437 adverse reports, 429 were caused due to usage of psychiatric medications. 56% of these psychiatric-medication related cases were serious.

“Psychotropic medications should not be prescribed in ordinary circumstances because this medication has a long half-life. If people take their medication as prescribed it will be a constantly high dosage and it could take weeks for one single tablet to exit the body’s system. Three out of four pregnancies are planned, and therefore society must take responsibility for informing women about the serious risks of transferring side effects to their unborn child,” advocates Aagard.

http://mentalhealthsocial.com/blog/2010/07/01/pregnant-women-must-stay-away-from-psychiatric-medication/