BeepFeb 21

Adolescent Cannabis Use Linked to Doubling Risk of Psychotic and Bipolar Disorders

https://lemmus.org/post/20350127

Show threadMetalSlugXFeb 22
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2845356
Adolescent Cannabis Use and Risk of Psychotic, Bipolar, Depressive, and Anxiety Disorders

This cohort study assesses the association of past-year cannabis use by adolescents with the risk of incident psychiatric, bipolar, depressive, and anxiety disorders by age 26 years.

Show threadPeeholeFeb 22

Thank you.

Maybe someone can tell if this is peer reviewed and if this is actually published in a reputable journal and also what’s the agenda of the institutes funding this.

Lot to ask I guess but I have 0 clue about this field and don’t really know how seriously I should take this

Show threadthinkercharmercoderfarmer

It’s the journal of the American Medical Association, it’s a peer reviewed journal and it’s as reputable as scientific journals come. the author affiliations are listed at the top of the article if you click the dropdown:

There’s a real link between cannabis use and some mental illnesses, this isn’t the first paper to make that connection. What that connection is and whether cannabis use among children is causing mental illness is still AFAIK an open question. There are, according to my psychiatrist, conflicting data on whether cannabis makes depression worse or better. It seems to help for me, so I continue to use it with their supervision and advice, but I also know people who quit cannabis and felt better as a result, so I think if you use it and have one of these illnesses, it’s worth running your own trials to determine whether it’s helping or hurting.

Feb 22 at 1:32amWeb
Show threadPeeholeFeb 22

Thanks a lot, this is what I’ve been wondering. I know that there’s a link and that cannabis can trigger e.g. psychoses especially if there’s a genetic predisposition, but this is extremely tricky data to work with and to draw inferences from.

They do mention the bidirectional nature and I think that’s where it becomes really hard to model. If you would properly try to isolate the cannabis effect you’d need to identify a cohort of individuals similar to those that got diagnosed and that have (self-reportedly) not consumed cannabis as a control group and then compare these two groups to their overarching population and then determine if the mean difference (if there’s any) is statistically significant.

Of course if we knew how to describe such population this would be an easy exercise, but since all we know is that the population is teenagers living in the same area, along with some other demographic metadata this is a limitation that I‘m not sure can be overcome.

I think that the connection is there in some way or another is an interesting finding and probably a good reason to try and stop teenagers from smoking weed. Personally it also helps me against depression but also I‘m not 14 anymore.

Show threadMinnesotaGoddamFeb 22
wait hold up. i know one of those authors. they’re a hack.
Show threadtechnocritFeb 23

There’s a real link

Yes, it’s called a correlation and, even if it exists, it’s not the same as causation.

I can’t believe how many people don’t understand this in a supposed science comm.

Show threadthinkercharmercoderfarmerFeb 23

I am aware. If I may refer you to the very next sentence:

What that connection is and whether cannabis use among children is causing mental illness is still AFAIK an open question.