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'Child's eye' view of methamphetamine
abuse
The children's stories are distressing: They had been
left alone and hungry for days, were physically abused, forced to get
high, told to steal from loved ones and to lie to authorities, and they
had seen their parents "hyper" and delusional. They had been
traumatized, many of them, but they had also been resourceful and
resilient. All had been taken from their rural homes and were now in
foster care, with some struggling to adjust and some doing remarkably
well.
They are the children of methamphetamine users, and
they were the subject of a study, apparently the first, to get a
child's-eye view of what happens in these families and how it affects
the children. "We're not aware of other studies that look at the effects
of being reared in a methamphetamine-involved family on children's
psychological development," said Wendy Haight, a professor of social
work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the lead
researcher.
The study will be published in the journal Children
and Youth Services Review (CYSR) and is available online at
http://www.childwelfare.com/kids/cysr.htm
The aim of the study was to gather information that
could help these children and others like them in the often-difficult
adjustment to foster care and beyond, Haight said. "We want to help
foster parents understand more about what the child has gone through,"
said study co-author Teresa Ostler, a social work professor at Illinois
who specializes in clinical psychology. "A lot of it involves
experiences of trauma, where the child needs huge help in putting things
together and in making sense, in knowing that their feelings have
reasons."
The study involved 18 children, ages 7-14, from 12
families. All were involved with the child-welfare system because of
their parents' methamphetamine abuse. At the time of their interviews,
they had been in foster care anywhere from five to 39 months, with 15.6
months the average.
The central focus of the study were semi-structured
interviews with each child, conducted by a psychiatrist or child
clinical psychologist, which lasted about 30 minutes and were audiotaped.
The interviews were then transcribed and coded by other researchers to
produce specific data. Methamphetamine can have profound effects on the
user, Haight said, including extreme irritability, paranoia and
heightened sexual arousal. Users can go on days-long highs, followed by
days of sleep. "These are adults behaving in very unpredictable,
dangerous ways, and the child is there too," she said.
In most of these families, parents also were making
the drug, sometimes involving their children in criminal behavior, and
possibly exposing some to toxic fumes and the danger of explosions or
fires. "Meth has such a rapid effect that you see parenting just break
down literally," Ostler said. "Families change rapidly in that time and
I think that's very terrifying for children," she said. Yet despite
those conditions, the researchers found that when the children were
asked about "sad or scary times," they talked first or most often about
the experience of losing their parents, even months later, Haight said.
"Most want desperately to be with their families and feel a great deal
of pain and grief over being separated from their parents."
Another complication is that some of these children
had taken on the role of caring for their parents, as well as younger
siblings, when their parents were under the influence. One child asked
who would watch over her mother when she was "sick," Haight said. They
also experience emotional harm from the stigma of being the children of
methamphetamine users, many of whom face years in prison. The children
often also carry a strong distrust of authority figures, passed on from
their parents as a result of the criminal activity involved, sometimes
reinforced by a meth-induced paranoia. Some have been actively
socialized into a rural drug culture. "It becomes a huge blockage" to
intervention in some cases, Ostler said.
For children raised from an early age with their
parents using methamphetamine, even routine aspects of family life, like
regular meal and bed times, may represent "culture shock," the authors
say. The researchers are using what they've learned from this study and
previous research to develop materials for use not only by foster
parents, but also by child-welfare workers and other professionals. "We
get more requests than we can accommodate from people just desperate for
some information," Haight said.
They also are conducting weekly sessions, or
interventions, in the foster homes of the children who took part in the
study, with support from the Illinois Department of Children and Family
Services. They are working to develop a model in which local
professionals are the ones directly involved with the families, but with
supervision from university psychologists and psychiatrists.
As a result of the study, the researchers suggest that
additional resources and services, in particular mental health services,
need to be more accessible for these children and their foster parents.
Haight also pointed out that teachers in rural
schools are often the first to know and get involved when
methamphetamine abuse comes into a family, giving children everything
from extra attention to food and clothes. With additional funding, the
schools could play a larger role, she said. Even with what many of these
children have dealt with, Haight stressed that they are not just passive
victims. "Not only have they experienced these horrible situations, but
they survived, and you can't help having some respect for that," she
said. They responded in a variety of ways, and were often very
resourceful in the process, she said.
The CYSR article, titled "A Child's-Eye View of Parent
Methamphetamine Abuse: Implications for Helping Foster Families to
Succeed," can be found at
http://www.childwelfare.com/kids/cysr.htm
through the link, "Articles in Press." An earlier study from the project,
"In These Bleak Days: Parent
Methamphetamine Abuse and Child Welfare in the Rural Midwest," was
published in the August 2005 issue of CYSR and can be found at
www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01907409
Press release
12 June 2006
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/uoia-se061206.php
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