Link between Adolescent Pot Smoking and Psychosis Strengthens

[Hunter]

Link between Adolescent Pot Smoking and Psychosis Strengthens

Thoughts?

Pretty fair article, IMO. The evidence is there, but it’s small:

“The available data on this subject is far from definitive—particularly with regard to any potential cause-and-effect relationship,” notes Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, a U.S. organization that advocates marijuana legalization for adults. “For instance, increased cannabis use by the public has not been followed by a proportional rise in diagnoses of schizophrenia or psychosis.”

[Roxanne]

Important point, increases risk in vulnerable individuals. Wonder if compared to other factors that increase risks for schizophrenia, how cannabis would stack against them. In other words, would adolescent use of cannabis be more or less of a risk for vulnerable individuals compared to those other factors?

[Hunter]

My interpretation of the information seems to be that individuals who are susceptible to schizophrenia may have an accelerated development of the symptoms with cannabis smoking – this would explain why there is no increase in proportion in states with legalized cannabis, but there’s also a strong correlation with adolescents showing the symptoms and cannabis smoking.

[Roxanne]

Another thing I have wondered is, are adolescents prone to schizophrenia more prone to utilize cannabis as opposed to their counterparts. I have read studies on this but cannot with any accuracy recollect the information.

[Hunter]

Semi-related follow-up:

Geneticists Are Starting to Unravel Evolution's Role in Mental Illness

Many of schizophrenia’s symptoms, such as auditory hallucinations and jumbling sentences, involve brain regions tied to speech, says Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. Over the course of hominid evolution, he says, the ability to speak could have outweighed the small, but unavoidable risk that the genes involved in language could malfunction and result in schizophrenia in a small percentage of the population.

[AlphakronikGenes]

The proper headline for their study should read: “Link between Adolescent Pot Smoking in individuals Susceptible to Schizophrenia and Schizophrenic Tendencies Strengthens”.

[Hunter]

Yeah, but even scientifically-oriented media can sensationalize an issue.

[EthanThePharmacist]

The important thing to remember with this study is that it does not show a cause-effect relationship. Correlation does not imply causation. People with anxiety and mental illness may simply more inclined to self treat with cannabis and their prior predisposition to mental illness could be the causative link, not cannabis.
There may be a link but, from the pharmacology, both THC and CBD, and CBG/CBC to a lesser extent have antipsychotic effects especially at the 5HT1a and 2a receptors and can reduce psychotic effects. High doses of THC may be able to trigger it in predisposed populations but it is not the whole story. I’m especially interested in the allosteric modulation of CB1 by CBD and coequal administration with THC to mitigate side effects.

[mdrust]

I worked in mental health for 10 yrs and yes people with schizophrenia often times use marijuana to cope with the symptoms. This can make the symptoms worse. The onset of Schizophrenia occur between the ages of 16-22, around the time most people are exposed to marijuana. Schizophrenia is genetic and absolutely not caused by marijuana use.