Low Birth Weight Puts Child at Higher Risk for Psychiatric Problems | Voice of America - English
Babies born before completing the typical 40 weeks of pregnancy are often underweight. Premature infants are considered 'low birth weight' if they weigh less than two and a half kilos. At less than a kilo and a half, they're considered 'very low birth weight.' Many of these children end up with health issues related to being born so small ? ranging from vision loss to breathing problems.
MichiganState University researcher Naomi Breslau and her colleagues needed todetermine whether any psychiatric problems might be due to biology, not toenvironment. So they looked at children from two disparate communities. "Oneis inner-city children, mostly minority, black, and disadvantaged," sheexplains. "And another community which was a middle-class, suburban,mainly white." Thestudy started in 1990. Breslau and her colleagues followed hundreds of childrenfor close to 15 years. They asked mothers and teachers of the children todescribe the kinds of problems these children were having. It turns out, themothers and teachers reported that the low birth weight children did tend tohave more problems than normal birth weight children. "Thechildren of low birth weight had lower scores and academic achievement in mathand reading, and lower score on cognitive abilities," Breslau says."We also found problems with what we call internalizing, namelydepressive, anxious kids, or externalizing, namely acting out kids. But therewere modest effects in both communities, equally." Theresearchers did find one significant difference between the two groups. Lowbirth weight kids from disadvantaged communities were more hyperactive and hadmore difficulty paying attention than low birth weight kids in more affluentcommunities. Breslausays teachers and parents need to help these low birth weight children overcomesome of their psychiatric difficulties so they can do better in the classroom.Now she's studying how the ability to pay attention affects a child's successin school. Herresearch is published in the .