Prenatal Alcohol Exposure: A Comprehensive Clinician’s Guide to FASD

As a mental health practitioner, you may encounter individuals with a “hidden disability” that compromises their success in career, family, and life. Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is a significant issue that can lead to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), a condition that lacks a diagnosis and professional assistance, resulting in frustration and suffering for those affected.

The book “Prenatal Alcohol Exposure: A Clinician’s Guide” provides comprehensive, clinically relevant information to help you understand the complexities of PAE and FASD. Written by noted scholar and clinician Mansfield Mela, this guide fills a glaring gap in the training literature on PAE.

Understanding the Impact of PAE

Lacking a diagnosis, individuals with FASD can experience unnecessary institutionalization or enter the criminal justice system. This book emphasizes the need for individual clinicians to develop expert knowledge of PAE, rather than creating new alternative services or systems to cater to these patients.

Through evidence-based research and the most current assessment techniques and treatment strategies, you’ll learn how to understand that pathophysiology is key to interpreting outcomes and that the effects of PAE vary according to the differential impacts of other biopsychosocial factors.

Clinical Vignettes and Expert Guidance

This beautifully written and clinically rich guide offers in-depth coverage of essential topics, using clinical vignettes to help you work through differential diagnoses, recognize the “red flags” that individuals with PAE may exhibit, and implement evidence- and practice-based modifications to care that help patients improve and even thrive.

Nosological Evolution and Assessment Techniques

Over the five decades that the complications of PAE have been recognized in the scientific literature, the terms used to describe the entities have changed. This guide helps you understand this nosological evolution and recognize the bridging of FASD in the interface of PAE and its mental disorder sequelae.

The section on assessment and diagnosis covers the latest techniques, including:

• Neuroimaging and psychological testing, both of which are promising although not yet reliable
• Laboratory testing for general screening, diagnostic confirmation, monitoring, and risk management

Pharmacological Intervention and Psychological Treatment

Chapters are included on pharmacological intervention, reviewing both medications currently in use and those requiring further study, as well as psychological treatment, focusing on interventions to replace deficits with techniques that correct affect regulation, executive dysfunction, and impulsivity.

Enhancing Quality of Life and Critical Success Factors

Strategies and programs that enhance quality of life, ensure interdependence, and are socially responsible and inclusive are explored in a chapter on the “critical success factors”

Proper diagnosis of FASD is fraught with difficulty, and clinicians need specialized knowledge to navigate the red herrings and red flags. This guide equips professionals with the requisite skills and clinical acumen to identify individuals with PAE and provide them with optimum care.