Unfortunately, many children and adolescents with FASD go unrecognized and untreated (and the symptoms of their hidden complex issues becomes looked at as misbehavior)
From the article: Fetal Alcohol Exposure Often Mistaken as Behavioral Issues – Medscape – Jan 12, 2015:
The investigators note that although children with FAS are usually correctly diagnosed on the basis of growth criteria, central nervous system impairment, and characteristic facial features, other, more common disorders related to prenatal alcohol exposure may be missed.
“Unfortunately, many children and adolescents with FASD go unrecognized and untreated; this is due to multiple factors, including unknown maternal history of alcohol use during pregnancy, lack of consistent facial dysmorphology and growth impairment across all diagnoses within the fetal alcohol spectrum, and the high rate of co-occurring mental health disorders,” the authors write.
They hypothesize that in addition to these factors, “the historically confusing language and diagnostic terminology applied to alcohol-affected children, and the perceived stigma against addressing alcohol use by pregnant women most likely contributed to the majority of affected children and adolescents…
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