Two studies profiled on The Chart, a CNN Health site, documented new reasons for those with children to consider giving up their smoking habit. The studies are both from the American Academy of Pediatrics, examining how secondhand smoke affects American children in their learning behaviors and their attitudes toward the use of cigarettes.

Increased Risk of Neurobiological Disorders

The first study, from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Tobacco Free Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, found that children exposed to secondhand smoke at home had a 50 percent increased risk of meeting criteria for at least two childhood neurobiological disorders when compared with children who were not exposed to smoke at home.

The researchers used 2007 data obtained from the CDC and the National Center for Health Statistics. The analysis showed that nearly 5 million children under the age of 12 are exposed to secondhand smoke at home. In addition, 8 percent of those exposed (approximately 274,000 children) have learning disabilities like ADHD.

The authors of the study point out the support that the findings have for encouraging families to volunteer to implement a smoke-free at home policy. The impact on public health for pediatric mental costs would be dramatic, besides the very personal impact on the individual families that can prevent the development of a neurobehavioral disorder in their children.

The article included information about the costs of treating a child with neurobiological disorders. Treating a neurobiological disorder can cost about $14,576 per case, totaling about $9.2 million nationwide each year.

Desensitized to Cigarette Smoke

In a second study, children aged 8 to 13 from households with at least one adult smoker were found to be 78 percent less likely to begin smoking if they described the smell of cigarette smoke as “unpleasant” or “gross,” when compared with children the same age who had a more passive description of cigarette smoke.

The study shows that the perception of secondhand smoke as a negative part of smoking may work as a protection against the initiation of smoking at a young age. It may lead to a type of targeted prevention effort.

Lead researcher Dr. Douglas A. Gentile of Iowa State University, Ames’s Department of Psychology and his team of researchers from Singapore and Hong Kong conducted a 2-year investigation on a large population of primary- and secondary-level students in Singapore to assess their levels of gaming activity and related behavioral impacts. Of a total pool of 3,034 children from six primary and six secondary schools—743 were in third grade, 711 were in fourth grade, 916 were in seventh grade, and 664 were in eighth grade in 2007. About 2,200 of the students included in the study were male, as five of the schools investigated were all-boys’ schools. For two years, students were surveyed to measure the prevalence of such risk factors for developing pathological gaming as amount of time spent gaming, social competence, social phobia, school performance, impulsivity, depression, and anxiety.

Most of the students exhibited what is considered ‘normal’ levels of game time that do not directly affect health. Among the entire population, 83% of the participants reported playing video games on an occasional basis, and 10% reported having played video games in the past. The researchers found the average amount of playing time among the participants to be 20.5 to 22.5 hours per week.

Similar to statistics found in other countries, about 9% of the study’s Singapore population qualified for diagnosis of pathological gaming. The presence of related risk factors, including higher amounts of gaming time (playing for more than 30 hours per week), lower social competence, lower level of empathy, and higher rate of impulsivity, appeared to increase the participants’ risk for pathological gaming. Other studies have already shown that pathological gaming mirrors other addictions, but what hasn’t been certain is whether gaming addictions among children result as an outcome of poor social interactivity and poor academic performance, or vice versa.

However, in Gentile’s new study, students demonstrated comorbid behavioral problems—particularly depression, anxiety, social phobias, and lower school performance—which developed as outcomes of their gaming addictions. According to the researchers, those students who started demonstrating pathological gaming behavior also experienced increased levels of depression, anxiety, or social phobia. Also, if students quit their gaming, their behavioral disorders were seen to improve. It wasn’t clear how gaming contributes to disordered behavior, only that the two are directly associated to one another.

However, not all gaming will result in pathological gaming. To maintain a healthy lifestyle, the researchers advise parents to keep their children’s gaming to an average of two hours or less per day. When video gaming begins to take precedence in the child’s life, especially over other normal activities like social interaction or school, then parents should become concerned.

Gentile’s team study reveals that gaming addiction occurs long term and can affect one’s lifestyle like other addictions, and is not just a symptom of comorbid disorders but a primary behavioral problem. The researchers’ new study has been published online is available in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Source: HealthDay, Video Game ‘Addiction’ Tied to Depression, Anxiety in Kids, January 17, 2011

The grant program will target children between the ages of 0–17 years whose parents are enrolled in a Family Treatment Drug Court (FTDC) for using or abusing methamphetamine. Services that will be funded by the grants include early intervention medical treatment for newborns who were exposed to in utero substance use, as well as medical, dental, and mental health treatment for children whose families are affected by methamphetamine use. Awardees must appoint a service coordinator to facilitate the establishment of these child services in order to become eligible for the grants.

Research has shown that children of substance abusing parents, parents with poor mental health, or neglectful or abusive parents are at the highest risk for future mental health problems compared to children raised in healthier environments. Such children are likely to experience several emotional issues including anxiety, guilt, shame, or embarrassment, which may in turn lead to the development of multiple adverse mental health issues such as poor self esteem, anxiety disorders, depression, aggressive behavior, poor academic performance, violence, and inability to formulate structural bonds with family members or others.

The greatest tool for treating the array of problems that these children can experience—and could end up dealing with well into adulthood—is early intervention. SAMHSA intends to enhance programs that focus on children affected by methamphetamine abuse in order to treat mental health concerns early on, and to prevent further problems from developing in their future. By teaching these children that they are not responsible for their family member’s substance use disorders and related problems, they can build greater confidence in themselves and become more aware of the adverse effects of substance use. By breaking the cycle of substance use at an early age, such programs can effectively help prevent the reoccurrence of mental health and substance abuse problems in these children’s futures, thereby improving their chances of becoming healthy and responsible adults.

SAMHSA hopes to create better prevention strategies for at-risk children that include positive protective factors like strong support systems, social connections, and education on nurturing, bonding, parental involvement, and child development. The $16.8 million in grants are expected to fund up to 12 programs annually. Approximately $4.2 million will be granted per year, allotting up to $370,000 annually for every awardee. The grants will be provided by SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and will be dispensed based on available funds as well as the performance of each mental health service facility chosen. For the first year, programs located in California, Washington, Colorado, Oklahoma Nebraska, and Missouri will receive the SAMHSA grants.

Source: SAMHSA, SAMHSA awards nearly $16.8 million to expand services to children affected by methamphetamine in families participating in family treatment drug courts, October 8, 2010

A study done by Sylvie Murg, Joanna Gaines, Wei Su and Michael Windle examined how students are influenced in their choices about drugs and alcohol in the middle school years. They wanted to investigate how school-level use of tobacco, alcohol and marijuana are related to the individual’s choice to use these substances.

School-level use of alcohol and tobacco are connected with individual use in high school, but there has been little research to determine whether the same effect occurs in early adolescence. There has also been little examination of the possible modifying circumstances that may impact vulnerability to school-level influences. This study examined the role of peer deviance and parenting practices as modifying factors of school-level influence.

The researchers did the study using a cross-sectional design. 542 students participated, drawn from 49 public middle schools in a single metropolitan area. Students were asked about their use of alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana, in addition to friends’ deviant behavior in the last year.

Parents of the students were also questioned about parental nurturance and harsh or inconsistent discipline. School-wide levels of substance abuse were gathered from the Pride Surveys, which were administered to all students in each middle school.

The researchers used multilevel logistic regression analysis to look at individual use as a function of school-level use for each type of substance. Differential susceptibility was estimated by examining interactions of friends’ deviance and poor parenting with school-level substance use.

The results of the study reveal that of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana substances, only cigarette smoking was associated with school-level rates of cigarette smoking. The relationships of school-level smoking and alcohol use with individual use were positively associated with students whose parents reported poor parenting practices.

The study’s findings highlight the relationship between widespread school-level tobacco use and decisions made by individual students. If students attend a school where cigarette smoking is considered acceptable behavior by a large number of students participating in that practice, students may choose to smoke based on this perception.

Antismoking programs may find it beneficial to target middle schools who show a high school level of cigarette smoking. Students who suffer from poor parenting skills at home may be helped by additional support that encourages them not to initiate smoking and alcohol use.

The University of Florida News reports that the study is the first to demonstrate secondhand and thirdhand exposure to heroin and other opium products in Afghanistan. Bruce Goldberger, a professor of pathology and psychiatry with the University of Florida College of Medicine and director of the William R. Maples Center for Forensic Medicine, will present preliminary findings of the two-year study today during the 27th annual International Drug Enforcement Conference in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Top drug law enforcement officials from 88 countries will be at the meeting.

Goldberger and Dr. Mark Gold, the Donald Dizney Eminent Scholar and chairman of the department of psychiatry, two leading experts on drug abuse, were selected by the State Department to conduct the research.

The resulting data will aid the effort to reduce demand for narcotics and prevent drug abuse in Afghanistan.

The researchers drew on their 10-year effort to develop laboratory models and protocols for measuring harmful exposure to tobacco smoke to estimate secondhand exposure to opium products through inhalation and thirdhand exposure through contact with contaminated surfaces.

“The research team has an interest in the health and welfare of the women and children of Afghanistan who are innocently exposed to opium and opium products,” Goldberger said. “We have demonstrated that second- and thirdhand exposure to opium and opium products can result in serious health consequences, including addiction.”

Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world’s illegal supply of opium, the drug from which heroin is made, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. But little is known about the abuse of opium and other drugs in the Afghan population.
To learn more, the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs bureau of the State Department funded the study as part of its drug abuse and trafficking prevention work with the Afghanistan Ministry of Counter Narcotics.

The researchers obtained samples of indoor air, surfaces, and hair from women and children in homes where family members smoked opium and heroin.

Hair samples from the women and children were positive for opium products, as well as several synthetic opioids. In addition, opium products were present in indoor air samples and household surfaces such as floors, tables, toys and bedding with which children came into regular contact. The presence of synthetic opioid compounds suggests that the use of prescription drugs might also be a problem. Such exposure puts children at risk of abnormal development, including failure of the brain and lungs to grow properly. Such developmental delays can make it hard for children to pay attention and learn.

“There are critical periods in organ, body and brain development that can easily be hijacked by a toxic environment,” Gold said. “Our efforts are aimed at giving each child a chance to develop and grow to his or her potential.”

As has been proved for tobacco smoke, researchers suspect that adverse effects can also pop up in unexpected ways, such as in the development of bladder cancer.

Preliminary results show consistently that in more than 90 percent of study homes, indoor air, surfaces and residents’ hair contained opium and opium products.

The researchers will release more detailed results later and perform further analyses to get a clearer picture of the drug abuse problem in Afghanistan. To help address the issue, the study might expand to include culturally sensitive drug education and prevention programs.

The State Department has released a fact sheet on the study at www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/fs/140668.htm.

Science Daily reports that this population-based research is the first to examine the association of childhood ETS with early emphysema by CT scan in nonsmokers. Approximately half of the participants in this large multiethnic cohort had at least one regular cigarette smoker in their childhood home. Participants with more childhood ETS exposure had more emphysema-like lung pixels; an average of 20% of scan pixels were emphysema-like for those who lived with two or more smokers as a child, compared with 18% for those who lived with one regular smoker, or 17% for those who said that they did not live with a regular inside smoker as a child.

The researchers studied CT scans of 1,781 non-smokers without clinical cardiovascular disease recruited from six communities in the United States, including northern Manhattan and the Bronx, New York. Those reporting childhood ETS exposure were somewhat younger with an average age of 61, were more likely to be non- Hispanic white, and were less likely to have been born outside the United States. These differences were statistically controlled in the analyses.

"We were able to detect a difference on CT scans between the lungs of participants who lived with a smoker as a child and those who did not," observed Gina Lovasi, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. "Some known harmful effects of tobacco smoke are short term, and this new research suggests that effects of tobacco smoke on the lungs may also persist for decades."

Previous studies have found evidence that childhood ETS exposure affects perinatal and childhood health outcomes, and that adult exposure may affect adult respiratory health outcomes, including lung function and respiratory symptoms.

Although childhood ETS was not associated with adult lung function in this healthy population, this does not contradict the results for early emphysema, since airflow obstruction and anatomic damage are theoretically and clinically distinguishable. "However, emphysema may be a more sensitive measure of damage compared with lung function in this relatively healthy cohort," Dr. Lovasi notes.

Combined emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are projected to become the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2020.

The exposure information in this study does not provide information on the timing of ETS exposure during childhood, making it difficult to distinguish as exposure in utero. "The association between childhood ETS and early emphysema among participants whose mothers did not smoke, suggests that the effect we are detecting is for smoke exposure in the home during childhood rather than in utero exposure alone," observed Dr. Lovasi.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program and the National Institutes of Health.

"We were able to show that children who are exposed to tobacco smoke prenatally and during the first years of life have a higher risk of developing abnormal behavioral symptoms when they are of school age," said Dr. Joachim Heinrich of the Institute of Epidemiology at Helmholtz Zentrum München. "Moreover, it makes a difference whether the child was exposed to tobacco smoke first after birth or was already confronted with it during prenatal development."

According to the study, children who were only exposed to tobacco smoke prenatally have a 1.9 times higher risk of developing abnormal behavioral symptoms in comparison to children without any exposure (change this if it is the wrong comparison). The risk for children first exposed to tobacco smoke after birth is 1.3 times higher. Furthermore, children who were exposed to tobacco smoke both while in the womb and while growing up doubled the risk of developing abnormal behavioral symptoms. Such symptoms include hyperactivity, attention deficits or problems in their relationships with peers. The results of the study were independent of affects from the social environment in which the children were growing up.

In the framework of the GINI-plus study, data of a large birth cohort comprising 5,991 children and their parents was analyzed. Extensive studies will follow up on this study.

"The value of our study is based not only on our prospective, investigative approach, but also on the comprehensiveness of our survey as to possible pollution levels for the unborn, infants and children at different times," Joachim Heinrich explained. "This makes it possible to determine the effects of prenatal and postnatal tobacco smoke exposure and to differentiate between them."

To ensure the validity of their results from the questionnaires, the scientists carried out carefully controlled tests to exclude possible bias due to social factors. Simon Rückinger, lead author of the study, stated: "The relationship we found between tobacco exposure during fetal development and early childhood and behavioral problems at school age was not biased by other factors of the social environment."

The findings make clear that tobacco smoke exposure has a significant impact on the behavioral development of children. The negative influence is greater on the unborn child during the pregnancy of the mother than it is after this sensitive developmental phase.

Too often, the media relays images of today’s American father in a rather dishonorable, scornful, and offensive light, which may seem out of tune with a customarily prideful and patriotically minded nation. In the news, we hear of irresponsible dads who are absent from the picture, unwilling to support their families, and who choose to carouse in their drunken revelry instead of behaving like a good father should.

Unfortunately, this message has been so propagated in television shows, music, films, news reporting, and the court system—thanks to a prevalent national divorce rate—that it has now saturated our homes and become a common acceptance in the minds of mothers, children, and even fathers. While some men do neglect their families, all single fathers are stricken with the burden of challenging a life-long stereotype of being incapable of providing for their own children financially and emotionally.

Men are traditionally presented with the expectation of fulfilling their gender’s role: family provider, head of household, or breadwinner. In his book Divorce in Psychosocial Perspective: Theory and Research, Joseph Guttmann wrote, “Family status is the most significant social variable accounting for a disparity between the genders in adult psychopathology.” Since the dawn of the industrial era, men have been expected to be gone for long periods of time while earning money to support their families, while women stay at home to raise the children and keep up the house.

Because of this economic family structure, Guttmann wrote, women in our country have been viewed as being solely responsible for raising the children, while men are considered to be solely responsible for providing the income. In these terms, fathers must be capable of satisfying this fiscal ideal in order to live up to their male identities.

In the book Throwaway Dads: The Myths and Barriers That Keep Men from Being the Fathers They Want to Be, authors Ross Parke and Armin Brott write, “For men much more than for women, providing for their families is inextricably tied to their self-image and even to masculinity itself.” According to Guttmann, in this polar division of gender in the household, fathers are deemed as distant role models for their sons and an example of what their daughters should aspire for in a husband, and they are considered as being ethical, materialistic support for their wives.

The problem with exclusively typecasting a good father as a good provider is that the equation neglects the role that fathers serve emotionally, psychologically, and sociologically, according to Parke and Brott. Wade Horn, director of the National Fatherhood Initiative, notes that “emphasizing fatherhood in largely economic terms has helped contribute to its demise. If we want fathers to be more than just money machines, we need a culture that supports their work as teachers, coaches, nurturers, disciplinarians, and moral instructors.” Mothers and fathers alike are culturally susceptible to accepting the “breadwinner” stereotype and rigidity of gender roles, and condone the idea that any man who cannot fit the mold is considered flawed.

This haphazardly sets the father up to fail in the role of nurturing his children. Guttmann writes, “Because women more than men are involved in housework and childcare, they are viewed as being more naturally oriented toward (hence better at) an expressive role…And yet, despite endless reinforcements to the belief that parenthood is biologically based and not learned, there is no scientifically conclusive evidence to sustain the claim that fathers cannot or should not fully participate in caring for and raising children.” Despite the change in modern households where mothers are now working more and the emphasis of both parents’ participation is deemed as mutually significant, a father’s importance in child rearing is still very much forgotten.

If a man becomes seen as unable to fulfill his duty as husband and father, all odds begin to work against him, particularly in the division of family. Even though almost every state’s legislation prohibits judges from granting custodial preference based solely on gender, the legal system still demonstrates a trend of favoring women by a huge margin. Parke and Brott note that more than 82 percent of the time the mother is granted sole custody, and only 7 percent of cases resolve in joint custody. An interesting justification for excluding fathers was even taught and upheld by the Family Law Committee of the Minnesota Bar Association. Their 1971 guidelines stated:

“Except in very rare cases, the father should not have the custody of the minor children of the parties. He is usually unqualified psychologically and emotionally; nor does he have the time and care to supervise the children. A lawyer not only does an injustice to himself, but he is unfair to his client, to the state, and to society if he gives any encouragement to the father that he should have custody of his children.”

Since the mid-1960s, a movement in the U.S. government policy began to shift away from fathers. Parke and Brott explain that the federal assistance program Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was set up in a way that deliberately excluded fathers: “Women, it seems, are presumed to be fit parents; men, as in so many other parenting-related areas, have to prove it.” According to the U.S. Census Bureau, out of 11.6 million single parents living with their children in 2008, 9.8 million of them are single mothers and only 16 percent of them are single fathers. The chances of a man gaining any rights to his fatherly privileges are slighted, not likely, or seen as unreasonable.

“Contrary to the image of the swinging playboy after the divorce,” writes Guttmann, “custodial and non-custodial single fathers suffer serious emotional and physical effects…single fathers undergo a great deal of stress and describe an array of feelings such as anger, sadness, resentment, and depression.”

With the media and the government encouraging the idea that women don’t need men in order to raise their children and are better off without them, fathers are left in a destitute position in the family. Men are logistically ruled out of the equation, and ultimately classified as unnecessary except as a distant provider of money, leaving them alone to battle with the rage, shame, and frustration resulting from their loss.

Masculinity, as it is characterized, has also taught men that sadness is a form of weakness and that they need to solve their problems themselves. William C. Klatte writes in his book, Live-away Dads: Staying a Part of your Children’s Lives When They Aren’t a Part of Your Home, that because of this belief, men are more likely to be depressed and not seek help, and instead think they must hide their emotions, which causes more harm.

Over time, these suppressed emotions become so obscure and bottled up that these fathers stop feeling real emotions altogether, and begin merely going through the motions of their prescribed lives. “Another rub with avoiding sadness” writes Klatte, “is that it has a way of boiling over in anger or acting itself out as alcoholism, loneliness, isolation, ulcers, headaches, conflicts at work, sleep problems, or other things worse than the sadness itself.”

Now that these single fathers have to try to raise their children from a distance and maintain some impact on their children’s lives, some fathers find the challenge to be too overwhelming, or feel that they are not good enough fathers and that their children are better off without them.

Depression among single fathers is not only common, but it helps perpetuate a vicious cycle by justifying why they are viewed as “deadbeat dads” when they rely on self-medication through alcohol or drug abuse instead of seeking professional help. Guttmann writes, “It might also be argued that the condition of being a divorced parent without custody of children (the situation of most men in this category) is psychologically more risky than being a divorced parent with custody (as are most women in this category).”

According to the Associated Press, in 2007 more men than women (about 42 percent of men and about 19 percent of women) had reported a history of either alcohol abuse or alcoholism during their lives, and these figures still do not include those who chose not to report their alcoholism.

Alcohol is usually sought to relax the individual or to help them forget about their worries, but because it is a depressant itself, it actually deepens the depression the individual may already be suffering from. Isolation, depression, and consumption increases in order to withstand higher levels of tolerance over time, and for single fathers already feeling lost and hopeless, it becomes a sneering entrapment.

Klatte writes that in the eyes of the court, it is particularly difficult to place restrictions on live-in parents because they are responsible for their children’s daily care. Yet if a live-away parent violated his or her court-ordered rules (for example, creating an unsafe environment by drinking), the access to his or her children can be restricted easily.

Even though both mothers and fathers usually pay child support on time, the courts still drastically persecute fathers in a much higher percentage rate. The mothers, their lawyers, and the legal system can easily punish a father for outstanding payments or behavior they disapprove of, and sometimes do not find mothers who withhold their children from seeing their fathers as acting offensively.

It is commonplace to keep children away from their fathers for a number of reasons—Parke and Brott note that more than six million children are being denied access to their fathers each year. Even though eliminating a child’s father from his or her world can be seen as protecting children from harm’s way, children who grow up in fatherless families have more emotional problems, do worse in school, and have higher rates in criminal activity.

Statistically, children who have good relationships with their non-custodial fathers are less likely to abuse alcohol or drugs than children who never see their non-custodial fathers. However, children who live with no contact from their biological fathers are more than twice as likely to abuse drugs or alcohol.

Whether single fathers choose alcohol abuse as their escape valve to retreat from their depressing circumstances or mothers become unwilling to cooperate with their children’s fathers, the real harm produced by this ongoing cycle of the “deadbeat dad” convention is felt by the children. If children are denied access to one of their parents, they become more susceptible to carrying on the broken-home tradition in adulthood.

The problems with the legal system and society’s viewpoints on single dads will not vanish or improve overnight; the real change begins with seeking the proper help for substance abuse through professional guidance, 12-steps programs, or medical treatment. Also, for two-household families, counseling, mutual involvement, and focus on individual responsibilities and constructivism can help maintain the health and well-being of the children involved during this vulnerable and challenging period in their lives.

Studies from researchers Craig Anderson and Douglas Gentile of Iowa State University have shown that one in ten youth between the ages of 8 and 18 are addicted to video games (addiction being defined as playing for 24 hours or more per week, which results in functional damage such as increased health problems, attention deficit disorders, poor grades, and aggression). Children addicted to video games were also twice as likely to have ADD or ADHD.

Although some researchers suggest that video games decrease aggression by satisfying basic urges, many researchers such as Anderson and Gentile strongly disagree, having shown a correlation between the violence rating of the game and aggression, lack of forgiveness, and desensitization towards aggression exhibited by the child.

Surprisingly, the blood and gore were not really the problem, as violence was demonstrated to cause aggression according to the level of intentional harm done to characters in the game by the player, even if format was cartoonlike with happy music.

In 2008, Swedish researchers found that after playing violent video games, heart rate was increased during sleep, even though the youth in the study were not aware of sleeping poorly. In 2009, however, a study from the University of Arkansas showed that children who play video games for 7 hours or more a week showed increased sleepiness.

In 2009, Brigham Young University researchers found a correlation between video game playing and reduced quality of social relationships, as well as several other negative behaviors such as drug abuse and low self-esteem in female players.

There are some positive sides to playing video games, though, as long as play is limited: Researchers from Rochester University in 2009 showed that video games help develop better contrast vision, and scientists from the University of Michigan found that games that promote positive behavior instead of violence produced helpfulness in children.