Link: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/may/14/antidepressants-pregnancy-not-raise-childrens-risk-autism-adhd-stud

James Walker, a professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Leeds, said the research had helped to “cut through the noise” regarding recent concerns regarding whether medications taken by mothers during pregnancy could affect their babies.

“The practical message is straightforward” Walker said. “Women with moderate or severe depression should not stop their antidepressants in pregnancy out of fear of causing autism or ADHD. Depression that goes untreated in pregnancy carries real risks of its own, for the mother, the pregnancy and for the developing baby, including a higher chance of premature birth, postnatal depression and difficulties bonding with the baby. For milder depression, talking therapies and other non-medication approaches are usually tried first, in line with current guidelines. As always, decisions in pregnancy are personal and should be made with a clinician who knows the woman’s history.”

Have we even found a single link between habits/conditions of pregnancy and ADHD/autism yet? I feel like every time I hear these stories, it’s a repeat of the last study’s findings.

This one is a meta study based on other studies, so I guess that's to be expected.
Everything is a fucking meta study today, and IMO they are too often shit, because they generally try to account for variables that the original studies weren't made for.
Ah well, it's probably going to get worse, because now we will be overwhelmed by meta studies that are made by AI.

I want to see a modern study on cigerette smoking.

When I was a kid (early 90s), my mom defended her decision to not stop smoking when she was pregnant with me, by quoting a study from the 1970s. They found it did not cause any ill effects.

Well around 2005 I was poking around the internet, and found that yes, that study was reported exactly how she claimed, and was performed by the Nixon administration.

It was also funded by Marlborrow. So take that study with a salt mine worth of salt.

I want a new modern independant study done. Because my mom never stopped, and I have always felt like something is wrong with me, but I'm too dumb to put it into words. I'm not calling it autism, but it feels like there's a mental blockade preventing me from being me. I don't know how to explain it.

Cigarette smoking during pregnancy and adverse perinatal outcomes: a cross-sectional study over 10 years

It's pretty obvious that there's a hereditary component to ADHD/autism. But it's one of those things that needs further study to prove and since it's difficult to test these medications on pregnant women, it takes longer.

meta studies are the highest standard of evidence. when peer-reviewed, looking at old evidence in new lights is precisely what they're supposed to do, and there's no problem with that unless there's a response/refutal along those lines.

i haven't seen them be at a higher frequency than usual either; in fact the latest data i could find shows it's slowed down since 2019: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11795965/figure/cesm70010-fig-0002/ (note that the data cutoff is May 2024)

because now we will be overwhelmed by meta studies that are made by AI.

Have we even found a single major-journal systematic review that was made by AI yet?

what study was that? i have a hunch that it said less than you think. by 1964 there was a surgeon general's report and meta-analysis that showed smoking had lots of ill effects on the smoker including "low birth weight" and the 1979 report and meta-analysis found "The more the mother smokes, the greater the baby's birth-weight reduction"

check out https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44697/table/ch5.t1

There is a correlation, which is why the Trump administration was pushing the dangerous idea that pregnant women should not use acetaminophen because it will give their children autism. It's not a causation though.

Pregnant women are limited to only acetaminophen for reducing fevers and treating pain.

I was agreeing with you :)

Tylenol is the brand name in the US for acetaminophen. It’s the same as paracetamol. It’s the only fever reducer and pain reliever pregnant women can take.

Do you even know what a meta study is? It is not just "this amount of research says this and this amount of research says that", the actually important and actual work that goes into a meta study is to point out weaknesses of the examined base studies to weigh their informative value on the meta study's topic.

It's mainly genetic imo

Cigarettes, alcohol, street drugs. Most other things are benign.

It's sad that you feel so strongly about it but won't take the time to learn how these things work.

People with autism also tend to be more sensitive to physical stimulus of any sort and so may more acutely experience bodily sensations.

There's general risk with some foods as well, like raw seafood/meat, seafood high in mercury, and unpasteurized dairy.

Duh! Everyone knows it's the vaccines that do that.

Wait, or is it 5G? I get my conspiracies mixed up sometimes...

A substantial body of evidence links maternal infection during pregnancy to adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes in offspring. Large national registry studies have reported increased risks of neuropsychiatric disease such as autism spectrum disorder, cognitive delay, schizophrenia, and mood disorders after in utero exposure to maternal infections.

Links:
https://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/fulltext/2026/01000/neurodevelopmental_outcomes_of_3_year_old_children.4.aspx

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27287966/

I can't access this link but I may have been part of that study as a kid! My mother smoked almost all the way through her pregnancy with me and I went through a bunch of tests over about 10 years to see if it caused my allergies. I never got to see what the study actually said about it though.

Only if you were born between 1997 and 2006!

Fair! I was born a decade too early for this one 😅 but there was another conducted in Denver, Colorado in the 90s that I was in!

A pregnant woman should listen to her doctor and not your opinion.

Untreated depression and anxiety can be more harmful to both the woman and the fetus than the side effects of antidepressants.

Opinions should be taken into account and once given research for taking informed decisions.

Medics have a 52% successful diagnosis rate, and most of that stems from patients being unable to recognize symptoms to confer them do medics. Let alone the knowledge and skill limitations of individual professionals.

If you want to pack up a developing brain with mind-altering substancesdo it with yourself. Not even your own kid has to suffer for your poor decision making and choice of healthcare professionals.

Because your "how would I Had known" or " science wasn't aware at the time" excuses for your victim kids will not make it my dude. Because common sense spelled it right there for you.

And oh sweet Jesus is a severe mental health episode during pregnancy an absolute bitch to manage even inpatient. You take the stress of rapidly discontinuing a long term med then throw in pregnancy hormones and shit gets completely out of hand so fucking fast.

THEN I can't even give a gotdamn antihistamine for anxiety let alone a benzo! Keep her at home on her perfectly fine and normal Prozac! idw no peripartum anything up in my face. Give me the normal crazy I actually have meds for jfc. I'm on like five different actual hard hitters myself like the ones you ACTUALLY can't take during pregnancy (one of the reasons I'm forgoing pregnancy entirely).

If it's a choice between keeping them stable on an SSRI vs the risk of peripartum crisis I pick the SSRI any day. If anybody is this worried about SSRIs they need to look more into better women's health overall so they're less likely to need the SSRIs to begin with. Offer a better support BEFORE ripping out the currently functioning one.

That’s a lot of words to say you don’t trust women.

Thats too few words for a strawman and projecting your shit on others lol

You’re not worth any more of a reply than that frankly.

Have the day you deserve ;)

as if you could provide one. Im having a great day, thanks :*

Probably because you’re not a suicidal pregnant woman who has men telling her she should just die because the fetus is more important.

There are ways to reduce depression without packing your blood with psychoactive substances that go directly to a developing brain.

And again, reread my comment: information should be given for the right decisions to be made. If the mother still desires to use psychoactive substances for her own good after her research on the topic, her right. But she should know of the potential repercussions of her decisions.

And those options should be weighed between a woman and her doctor, not some rando on the internet who feels like they’re more authorized to speak on this than actual medical providers.

Did i wrote anywhere that i should be weighting the decision itself? wtf are you on? Maybe take some online course on lecture comprehension.

You are here just trying to invalidate my opinion to include important factors within the frame of the decision making process, because you personally disagree with that.

And trying to give weight to your invalidation with a strawman.

Your opinion holds no weight between a pregnant woman and her doctor. Your opinion that women shouldn't take any medications and suffer throughout their pregnancy, science be damned, is harmful.

You really have 0 lecture comprehension and are basically arguing against something you made up my dude.

My opinion is my opinion, and its the problem of whomever reads it to take it into account or not.

As I personally do not take your opinion for nothing of importance in this regard, as you're toxic and basically delusional at this point if not just malicious in trying to reframe what I said.

Have a nice day, and please, don't forget to take your antidepressants.

Casually pushing that pregnant women should avoid antidepressents regardless of what their doctors advise isn't about lecture comprehension or debates.

It's a dangerous statement that you've pushed here and it is literally just your uneducated opinion.

"Pushing"??? Again, go read again the comment, dont discuss with your personal projections.

It's a dangerous statement that you've pushed here and it is literally just your uneducated opinion.

You are now assuming my education and what I used to give my opinion?

Can I ask you whats your degree field? Or if you have one to start with as to put on yourself the selfentitlement to have the right to judge my opinion?

Because you're here feverishly fighting against my statements about psychoactive compounds chronically saturating the mother's bloodstream affecting the development of the child thats connected to that bloodstream for 9 months; and that this should be taken into account by the mother to inform herself of the potential repercussions of blindly taking said compounds.

Your opinion is dangerous in itself, not to mention that pretending to take away the right people have to take informed decisions, based on your personal belief (and maybe experience, sadly). Who are you to take on yourself the right of what people have to know or not?

I'm honestly really heavily doubting about not only your qualifications and background education here; since you're trying to invalidate basic biochemical processes caused by strong hormonal modulators that are proven to affect even already formed and developed brains; let alone the fetus neural tissue.

Please have some reading here:

• 25% to 30% of infants exposed to SSRI/SNRI in late pregnancy experience transient symptoms such as jitteriness, restlessness, rapid breathing, and altered muscle tone. https://fn.bmj.com/content/109/3/294

• In utero SSRI exposure, interacting with the maternal mood, is associated with distinct epigenetic alterations. Specifically, neonates show increased DNA methylation, an epigenetic signature that has also been linked to alterations in birth weight. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4622680/

• Alterations to the Fetal HPA Axis and Cortisol Levels: Infants prenatally exposed to SSRIs exhibit altered early programming of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress axis. This is demonstrated by significantly reduced early evening basal cortisol levels measured at three months of age when compared to unexposed infants. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4821181/

• Prenatal SSRI exposure is associated with an early gray matter volume expansion in the amygdala and insula, as well as increased structural connectivity between these regions. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10469300/

• Even after strictly adjusting for confounding variables, prenatal exposure to antidepressants is associated with decreases in gestational age and birth weight , alongside a modestly increased risk for moderate-to-late preterm birth. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9117424/

You know that there are hundreds of neurological problems outside of ADHD and Autism don't you? And if not, please inform yourself before pushing people to decide what to take or not based on what you believe is important, because its probably the popular thing you're paying attention to.

Your original and unhelpful comment that pregnant women should not take antidepressents even when their doctor prescribes them was removed by a moderator already.

Everything in pregnancy is lower risk vs higher risk, not no risk vs risk. Each pregnancy is different on top of that.

Pregnant women shouldn't listen to your opinion. They should listen to their doctors.

Your opinion is dangerous in itself, not to mention that pretending to take away the right people have to take informed decisions, based on your personal belief (and maybe experience, sadly). Who are you to take on yourself the right of what people have to know or not?

The only fucking opinion I've expressed here is that a pregnant woman should consult her doctor and listen to her doctor over random people's opinions on the internet.

Why that's so controversial to you, who the fuck knows. I suspect that you had your ego bruised when your comment was removed and you have a woman pushing back on you.

Pregnant women should listen to their doctors

Its controversial to you. Since if you had read my comments you would be aware that I never stated the contrary.

But you're some random triggered toxic lemmy user with zero lecture comprehension, just arguing with imaginary statements and little context knowledge it seems.

I still wouldn't recommend taking them. Antidepressants saturate the blood flow chronically, and having random neuroactive compounds going to the fetus thorough their whole development can't be good. Maybe not autism or ADHD but something else for sure.

Yes you fucking did.

I did not wrote that they shouldnt take antidepressants. I wrote that their effects should be taken into account and researched before taking them.

Thats my personal opinion, and the basis for that opinion (with some links provided a couple comments above, since seems that "common sense" isn't as common as one would hope).

There isn't any "pushing" for ignoring medical advice or opinion, nor any imperative statements on the requirement of avoiding taking them .

Again, you're arguing with imaginary projected things here, and are a supertoxic person on top of that.

I still wouldn't recommend taking them. Antidepressants saturate the blood flow chronically, and having random neuroactive compounds going to the fetus thorough their whole development can't be good. Maybe not autism or ADHD but something else for sure.

Here's your parent comment where you literally recommend NOT taking antidepressants even when doctors prescribe them to pregnant women.

Your opinion on this is dangerous to spread online, which is a big part of why that comment was removed to begin with.

Pregnant women should listen to and work with their doctors, not take any advice like this from a person like you.

even when doctors prescribe them to pregnant women.

Where is that?
Stop arguing for things you imagine in your triggered mind my dude. It affects your wellbeing.

You're commenting on a study that is talking about antidepressants and their use during pregnancy. You advised women to not take them regardless of how safe and effective they can be.

You're wrong and women should work with their doctors on treatment plans.

Your opinion is dangerous to spread online, and toxic on top of that.

Pregnant women should listen to and work with their doctors,

They surely have to.

And who people take advice from is their problem, not yours.

My opinion is that pregnant women should listen to their doctors and not you.