Effectiveness of intervention for pregnant women and mothers who use psychotropic drugs
Psychoactive substance use while pregnant is very risky for the pregnancy outcome and for the baby. Early multidisciplinary intervention during pregnancy is recommended to meet the needs of pregnant women and mothers. Therefore, service integration is preferred for this clientele. The goal of this article is to provide a summary of current findings about the effectiveness of intervention models that foster integration of care for pregnant women and mothers who use psychotropic drugs. Accessing recent meta-analyses shines a valuable and useful light on the effectiveness of various integrated treatment programs employed with this clientele. Essentially, although the effect sizes range from small to large, results show that integrated treatment programs produce favourable effects when compared with absence of treatment or non-integrated treatment programs. More specifically, results focus on substance use behaviour change, baby’s health at birth, the woman’s commitment to the process, her emotional interaction and reflective functioning (ability to recognize the impact of mental state on behaviours). Moreover, the many methodological limitations reported in the identified studies – such as sample composition (size, target population, age) and the variety of study designs used – point to the need for further research to better document the potential of integrated treatment programs.