No Link Between Mom's Smoking, Mental Illness in Kids

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There was no causal relationship between maternal smoking during pregnancy and subsequent schizophrenia or bipolar disorder in children, a large retrospective family-based study found.

Compared with children with no exposure to smoking during pregnancy, those with a high level of smoking exposure had an overall increased risk of severe mental illness (HR 1.51, 95% CI 1.44-1.59), reported Patrick D. Quinn, PhD, of Indiana University in Bloomington, and colleagues, writing online in JAMA Psychiatry.

However, this was only at the population level. When examining siblings where one was exposed to a high level of smoking and one was not, the researchers found that the associations weakened considerably and were non-significant (HR 1.14, 95% CI 0.96-1.35).

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there may be no link to mental illness but physical illness is very common in babies of smokers. my mom smoke, drank and did drugs while she was pregnant with me and I was born premature very small and had basically no body heat. to this day I can’t stand to be cold.

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My mom has never smoked, drank, or didnt do any kind of drugs that weren’t Rx’d.
My dad smoked cigarettes, but didn’t drink but occasionally on special events, didn’t do any drugs,

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There may be other reasons to criticise smoking during pregnancy ,but it seems this isn’t one.

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I don’t blame my mom for my mental illness. even if they found smoking did cause it I still wouldn’t blame her. I got it by genetics pure and simple,