Psychosis

Articles on link between mental illness and marijuana

In summary, much of the available evidence supports the criteria of strength, consistency, biological gradient, and temporality for cannabis causing psychosis. Furthermore, supporting specificity, while many substances are known to induce psychosis, the risk for conversion to schizophrenia is greatest with cannabis-induced psychosis.

The study authors consider high-potency cannabis to be products with more than 10 percent tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the compound responsible for the drug's psychoactive effects. The fact that consuming high-THC cannabis products has a greater risk is concerning, Lisdahl says, because these products are more common in the market now.

Now a new study published Tuesday in the The Lancet Psychiatry shows that consuming pot on a daily basis and especially using high-potency cannabis increases the odds of having a psychotic episode later.

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2. Marijuana classification... CESAR

Using a quasi-experimental design wherein we assessed cannabis use patterns after the onset of psychosis, we were able to investigate the causal nature of the association between cannabis use and risk of relapse in psychosis. Although it has been proposed that a common genetic liability or reverse causation may underlie the association between continued cannabis use and relapse,13 our results indicate that change in cannabis use represents a robust risk factor for relapse in patients with FEP.

“They told me I was having a psychotic episode brought on by cannabis,” said Thibodeau, who requested that the Star use his grandmother’s surname as he is still recovering from the breakdown.
“I was shocked. We live in a society where there is such a culture around smoking dope that people think it is cool to be a stoner. Nobody ever talks about the pitfalls.”

Pot is becoming more potent, a new study suggests.
In the study, the researchers looked at more than 38,600 samples of illegal marijuana seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration over 20 years. They found that the level of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol— marijuana's main psychoactive ingredient — in the marijuana samples rose from about 4 percent in 1995 to about 12 percent in 2014.
Conversely, the level of CBD, or cannabidiol — an ingredient sometimes touted for its potential health benefits — fell from about 0.28 percent in 2001 to less than 0.15 percent in 2014.
But smoking marijuana with high doses of THC may involve a higher risk of negative health effects, such as psychosis orpanic attacks, he said.
"Great article- clearly based on the previous posted comments  marijuana severely impairs a person's ability to understand and process information. Their anecdotal evidence continues to validate scientific statistics. " -No2Pot

The number of patients admitted with psychotic episodes after having consumed cannabis has more than tripled in Germany over the last 15 years, from 3,392 in 2000 to 11,708 in 2013. More than half of the patients are younger than 25.

Cannabis is involved in approximately 50% of psychosis, schizophrenia, and schizophreniform psychosis cases Cannabis is a known risk factor for schizophrenia, although the exact neurobiological process through which the effects on psychosis occur is not well understood. Cannabis is also of particular interest in both the first-episode psychosis (FEP) and the ultra high risk (UHR) populations. This is mainly due to their increased susceptibility to cannabis abuse.