This would not surprise me at all. But I'm curious to know if they got the causation backwards. Maybe people with schizophrenia just have a higher likelihood of smoking marijuana
There is no science to state that psychoactives cause these mental disorders. In fact, current medical science states the opposite, that psychoactives do NOT cause, but exacerbate, certain mental disorders.
Considering that both psychoative drug use and mental disorder rates are on the rise (some would argue due to improved screening, treatments, etc) I'm not sure how anyone could draw a conclusion from this.
If they want to prove that psychoactive use can cause mental disorder, they should approach it from a bio-chemical perspective.
The interesting thing is the "Use of Marijuana to Self-Medicate BD" study is useless. Monitoring a small number of bipolar people for 6 days will give you completely random results. It's too short a period to remove moods from the equation.
It would be great to do double blinded experiments to test this more definitely, but we don't due to unethical reasons. I think the differential legalization will provide useful data along those lines, though it will take some years.
I also think it's important to distinguish between THC "exacerbating" an existing mental illness and triggering psychosis in otherwise healthy people who have a predisposition, due to genes and early life experience. We still don't have a clear idea exactly how to say who's predisposed. Plenty of reasons to take caution, in my opinion.
[1] https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24625/the-health-effects-of-cann... [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
It's fair to say that it triggers the early onset of a "dormant" mental disorder.
My point being to say that it "causes" anything other than that trigger is currently unsupported.
Citation please. Drug usage tends to begun around the same age schizophrenia is typically diagnosed.
IMO, drug use is a symptom and not the cause. That said, we didn't have 75% THC vape back in the day and now everyone is doing CBD with wonderful new Delta-8 and there's not a shred of research on it.
Some people like the high from THC, which might make someone go in the direction of psychosis, it can be very stimulating.
For people whith a background of psychosis, they might like the CBD part, which makes them relax and feel less stimulated and aroused.
I believe research has said similar of opiates. Heightened sensitivity to pain is one of the symptoms of opiate withdrawal.
It stands in contrast to other medications where withdrawal isn't counter-indicated by the underlying condition. I.e. amphetamine withdrawal doesn't really exacerbate ADHD. It's not a pleasant thing, but stopping the medication only sends your ADHD back to baseline, not below.
Another similarity to cigarettes and opiates is that they don't cure anything, they merely treat symptoms.
Not a doctor, but I don't think you're at risk of those problems if you take them every 3-4 months. They're great for acute symptoms like that because of how effective they are. They're not good for chronic symptoms, though, because of that feedback loop.
Not so much with amphetamine (which is weakly reinforcing at recommended doses), but for nicotine, I know ADHD folks who have straight quit for a couple months, then go back because their life has become a complete shambles and it doesn't seem to be getting better.
They are extremely helpful since I'm bipolar. They give me a buffer for highly stressful events, so I'm not dealing with both anxiety and the event. Having anxiety the next day sucks but avoiding a manic or depressive episode is worth that.
The "component cause" makes sense... marijuana and other psychedelics don't necessarily cause schizophrenia in most people, but for some people it may serve as a trigger. There's some evidence that trauma in childhood may have a similar impact.