We are not asking them to hate us-- we want them to help us

Much of the narrative was around the issue of discriminatory and punitive attitudes and related treatment on the part of health care workers of various disciplines when interacting with the women. [...] The paper concludes with an overview of some of the preliminary changes being made by the RQHR to begin to address the specific needs of this group of mothers. [...] Just a cursory examination of the criteria for diagnosis of substance abuse exposes the underlying bias towards functioning within the accepted norms of Western society; poor work performance; suspended or kicked out of school, neglect of children; driving the roads and highways; involvement with the courts and arguing with the spouse. [...] The Content of Drug Abuse Treatment Models Examining drug addiction and abuse treatment, Epstein (2006) summarizes the approaches of behavioural and cognitive treatments of the substance abuser as viewing the individuals “…willfully deviant from the beneficence and virtue of American society, which is generous, indulgent, and pure of hostility, cruelty and meanness” (Epstein, 2006, p. 85). [...] Referencing to the work of Lyons and Ritter (1998), Mandell and Schram (2009) write, “For the media, the demonization of drug-abusing parturient women made better copy than did the detailed elaborations of the complexity of germane issues” (p.