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Antidepressants in pregnancy do not raise children’s risk of autism or ADHD, study finds
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 15 May 2026
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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.
It's mainly genetic imo
honestly the idea of autism being caused by something seems fucking insane, it's like saying red hair is caused by smoking while pregnant, what the fuck
like it's just kind of obscene ableism, isn't it? At least since people are constantly saying "causes" and "risk" as if having autism or ADHD is a terrible disease that we need to cure, rather than an inherent part of who you are that society has a moral obligation to accomodate.
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
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!
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
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/
Cigarettes, alcohol, street drugs. Most other things are benign.
There's general risk with some foods as well, like raw seafood/meat, seafood high in mercury, and unpasteurized dairy.
which to be fair are things most people know aren't "clean", as such.
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.
Yes - I've heard that women with autism are more likely to experience pains in pregnancy and thus choose to use painkiller (e.g Tylenol or another brand of paracetamol). Autism being sometimes inherited, there is then a correlation if you study it.
This sounded weird to me, but I also have heard women who give birth at a later age are more likely to have a child with autism. Maybe older pregnant women will have more pain during pregnancy? In which case there should be a correlation between painkillers usage while pregnant, and autism rates in offspring.
People with autism also tend to be more sensitive to physical stimulus of any sort and so may more acutely experience bodily sensations.
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.
Yep, that's precisely what i was trying to say.
Oh okay, that's weird because i thought the whole debate was about one specific painkiller that i remembered began with T.
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.
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.
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)
Have we even found a single major-journal systematic review that was made by AI yet?
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 sad that you feel so strongly about it but won't take the time to learn how these things work.