3 ms·

> In all seriousness, increased schizophrenia among heavy pot smokers (especially in teenage years) has been consistently reported for a long time, and the effe

> In all seriousness, increased schizophrenia among heavy pot smokers (especially in teenage years) has been consistently reported for a long time, and the effect is extremely significant. I suppose it is possible schizos are drawn to heavy pot use in their teenage years as a sort of self medication, but it seems unlikely. Actually, that's exactly it - people with a predisposition for schizophrenia are known to be drawn to drugs (particularly nicotine) in a form of self-medication. People with depression and ADHD are more likely to smoke tobacco as well, though the link there is a lot less strong than it is for schizophrenia. The link between cannabis and schizophrenia has also been studied, and it appears that marijuana can catalyze the onset of symptoms, but it won't produce them in someone who wasn't already going to develop schizophrenia anyway. So yes, if your family has a history of mental health issues, you probably want to stay away from marijuana. But otherwise, you're probably safe.

saiya-jin 10y ago
former GF has a father whose life-long schizophrenia was triggered after heavy drinking during draft military service. no other substance involved. messed up for rest of his life. if you have it in you, anything can trigger it. legal drugs, illegal drugs, stress & hardships of life and work, serious accidents, failed relationships and so on.
- OldSchoolJohnny 10y ago
  "Trigger" an already existing genetic underlying condition? Do you possibly think you might have that back to front? Seems pretty likely that people with sudden onset of unusual mental conditions turn to readily at hand psychoactive substances to help manage it.
  - bermanoid 10y ago
    You're right, many of these studies use weak methods to infer causality that don't fully rule out that possibility. Usually the problem is that they fail to account for poor diagnosis accuracy - someone with (for instance) active schizophrenia might not be diagnosed for quite some time after it presents, and any window where the person is undiagnosed but symptomatic is a period where self medication of symptoms could appear later in the data as having "caused" the symptoms when they are finally diagnosed. I don't think this is typically deliberate, but it's sloppy, at the very least confidence levels should be adjusted to account for assumed error rates. Some studies fall apart completely (in the sense that you cannot reject the hypothesis that increased marijuana use is driven by current symptom strength, not the other way around) under reasonable assumptions about how correlated symptom strength and diagnosis probability are. I don't think this is just a theoretical problem, either. At least anecdotally, most of the people that I've known with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia were undiagnosed for many, many years before finally figuring it out, despite clearly having a lot that was "wrong". There are massive stigmas that make sufferers hesitant to disclose the true severity of their symptoms, even when asked, until they become unbearable.

saiya-jin 10y ago

former GF has a father whose life-long schizophrenia was triggered after heavy drinking during draft military service. no other substance involved. messed up for rest of his life. if you have it in you, anything can trigger it. legal drugs, illegal drugs, stress & hardships of life and work, serious accidents, failed relationships and so on.

OldSchoolJohnny 10y ago
"Trigger" an already existing genetic underlying condition? Do you possibly think you might have that back to front? Seems pretty likely that people with sudden onset of unusual mental conditions turn to readily at hand psychoactive substances to help manage it.
- bermanoid 10y ago
  You're right, many of these studies use weak methods to infer causality that don't fully rule out that possibility. Usually the problem is that they fail to account for poor diagnosis accuracy - someone with (for instance) active schizophrenia might not be diagnosed for quite some time after it presents, and any window where the person is undiagnosed but symptomatic is a period where self medication of symptoms could appear later in the data as having "caused" the symptoms when they are finally diagnosed. I don't think this is typically deliberate, but it's sloppy, at the very least confidence levels should be adjusted to account for assumed error rates. Some studies fall apart completely (in the sense that you cannot reject the hypothesis that increased marijuana use is driven by current symptom strength, not the other way around) under reasonable assumptions about how correlated symptom strength and diagnosis probability are. I don't think this is just a theoretical problem, either. At least anecdotally, most of the people that I've known with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia were undiagnosed for many, many years before finally figuring it out, despite clearly having a lot that was "wrong". There are massive stigmas that make sufferers hesitant to disclose the true severity of their symptoms, even when asked, until they become unbearable.