{"id":983,"date":"2021-09-08T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabisnow.com\/?p=57041"},"modified":"2021-09-08T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T13:00:00","slug":"does-cannabis-cause-psychosis-coincidence-or-causation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/?p=983","title":{"rendered":"Does Cannabis Cause Psychosis: Coincidence or Causation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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She had already had a history of major depression, but then the 20-year-old woman started cutting and electrocuting herself. At the psychiatric ward, looking for an explanation or a cause, doctors noticed that before she\u2019d checked into a hospital, she\u2019d already been in the ICU\u2014for \u201cvaping-related lung injury\u201d after \u201crecurrent, severe, and heavy THC use.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that, according to the presentation made by Michigan-based psychiatrist Chad Percifield, to the American Psychiatric Association\u2019s annual meeting, was enough to finger her cannabis consumption as a potential cause\u2014and enough to warn other heavy cannabis users that they could be next to have a mental break.<\/p>\n

\u201cResearch has previously shown that individuals who consume THC are three times as likely as those who do not to develop a psychotic disorder,\u201d Percifield told the Midland Daily News<\/a>. This was one in a series of media reports and scientific studies suggesting a link between cannabis use and psychosis, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association as well as The Wall Street Journal\u2019s op-ed page<\/a>\u2014under the sub-headline \u201cPort and psychosis link is real, researchers say.\u201d<\/p>\n

But is it? And how real\u2014if you\u2019re of sound mental health, will a couple of pulls from your vape pen push you over the line? And how should cannabis users and advocates react to news of cannabis coexisting with psychotic breaks, often dishonestly framed as a causal link and cause to re-evaluate or delay marijuana legalization plans?<\/p>\n

Smoke, Then Break?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Psychosis is defined as a break from \u201creality\u201d that usually manifests as hallucinations or delusions\u2014hearing or seeing something that other people can\u2019t see or hear, such as voices or sounds. Cannabis-induced psychosis is a disconnect from reality that occurs during cannabis use, or shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n

According to researchers, this phenomenon is real. Jeffrey Chen, a physician and founder of the University of California, Los Angeles\u2019s Cannabis Research Initiative wrote,<\/a> \u201cCannabis-induced psychosis has emerged as one rare but serious side effect to consider.\u201d However, he adds, while literature suggests a \u201cstrong link\u201d between using cannabis and developing psychotic symptoms, \u201cexperts have yet to discover the exact nature of that link.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meaning, researchers aren\u2019t sure if cannabis causes psychosis, or triggers or exacerbates underlying symptoms.<\/p>\n

(Keep in mind that substance abuse generally coexists with mental-health problems. Victims of trauma tend to use alcohol and other drugs more heavily than the general population, but that doesn\u2019t mean that the alcohol caused the behavioral health problems.)<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the problem with most of the studies.<\/p>\n

A prominent study that earned media in mid-July, suggested a link between cannabis and psychosis, and according to Michael Backes, a researcher and author of Cannabis Pharmacy: A Practical Guide to Medical Marijuana: <\/em>it assumes that cannabis was causal when it could simply co-relate.<\/p>\n

The Missing Link<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In July, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study out of Denmark that found the number of schizophrenia diagnoses \u201cassociated with cannabis use disorder\u201d had increased from 2 percent in 1995 to 8 percent since 2010, as CNN wrote when reporting on the study.<\/a> However, the study simply noticed the increase of sufferers of schizophrenia that also reported problematic cannabis use (something that people may have been less comfortable sharing with their doctors in the 1990s).<\/p>\n

\u201cIn studies like this one, people seeking treatment for cannabis issues appear to have higher incidence of schizophrenia,\u201d Backes told Cannabis Now. \u201cBut are the symptoms of schizophrenia driving some of these individuals toward cannabis in an attempt to self-treat their symptoms?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is not enough evidence to support an assertion that cannabis is a cause,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

In other words, cannabis users who developed psychosis or dependence problems may also have worn belts, or used money, or had poor diets, yet these aren\u2019t fingered as the causal factors. And that same report on the study noted that \u201cmost cannabis users, even those who are dependent on it, never seek treatment and many people use it recreationally without developing problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, what, then, is the best way to understand cannabis and mental-health problems\u2014and how should researchers, policymakers, and the public best understand the issue?<\/p>\n

Debate of Substance<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In Colorado, concerns over young people using too much high-potency THC oil helped trigger new legislation that requires people under 21 to visit two separate doctors before receiving a medical-cannabis recommendation. That new law also limits how much high-potency cannabis they can purchase.<\/p>\n

This didn\u2019t impress Joe Schrank. Schrank runs The Heavenly Center,<\/a> a Los Angeles-based recovery clinic that allows its inpatients\u2014there to recover from opioid addictions and alcohol addictions\u2014to use cannabis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If policymakers wanted \u201cto do something about what harms young people,\u201d they would \u201caddress alcohol,\u201d Schrank said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cCannabis should be regulated, but alcohol kills 1800 young adults a year, cannabis kills zero,\u201d he added. \u201cWe\u2019re chasing the wrong thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schrank\u2019s contrarian take is in part inspired by researchers like Percifield\u2014who, in his interview with the Midland Daily News, made an increasingly typical assertion (that neither his findings at the APA nor other research supported).<\/p>\n

As he observed, cannabis oil in vaporizer pens has more THC by volume than cannabis flower. Flower might have 15 to 20 percent; oil might have 50 to 70 percent or more. According to Percifield, \u201cvaping solutions increase this risk [of a psychotic episode] more than sixfold due to the potency of the vaping solution, which on average contains 52% THC versus the 13% THC contained in the marijuana flower,\u201d as he said in his Midland News interview.<\/p>\n

Until the science develops on this issue, consumers of both news and cannabis should be aware how these findings can be distorted or framed to suit political ends. At the same time, dismissing cannabis\u2019s potential to exacerbate mental health problems shouldn\u2019t be dismissed out of hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She had already had a history of major depression, but then the 20-year-old woman started cutting and electrocuting herself. At the psychiatric ward, looking for an explanation or a cause, doctors noticed that before she\u2019d checked into a hospital, she\u2019d already been in the ICU\u2014for \u201cvaping-related lung injury\u201d after \u201crecurrent, severe, and heavy THC use.\u201d And that, according to the presentation made by Michigan-based psychiatrist Chad Percifield, to the American Psychiatric Association\u2019s annual meeting, was enough to finger her cannabis consumption as a potential cause\u2014and enough to warn other heavy cannabis users that they could be next to have a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marijuana_information"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}