The association between cannabis use and suicidality among men and women • Hacker News Board

Re: The association between cannabis use and suicidality among men and women

#51

Post by nashke » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 8:53 AM UTC

youngButEager wrote: post #40

The very interesting thing is the degree of denial - of ANY negative side effect -- of using pot among any user. The vast majority of smokers would laugh it off if they were told "there's a notable correlation between suicide and pot use." I smoked it for about 3 years as a teen, between 1976 and 1978. In those days about zero 'horticultural engineering' was done to the stuff -- the potency was low. But the effects w…

I personally am in favor of decriminalizing cannabis use, as well as other drugs. Unfortunately, the debate regarding legalization is very polarized, and tends to not be based on scientific findings. One side tends to demonize cannabis while the other dismisses any information regarding negative effects. I believe there are many reasons for legalization, but mainly as a method for harm reduction, not because cannabis is some sort of a wonder-drug. Here are some studies regarding long-term negative effects: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1402309

http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=24880...

Our findings in no way imply cannabis use causes suicidality. There are many other factors we couldn't analyze which could be the cause of this association. The reality is that these two behaviors (cannabis use and suicidality) are very complex, and this study is just one small step in the understanding of how these complex behaviors interact.

I believe proponents of cannabis legalization should look at all the data regarding long-term effects of cannabis with as little bias as possible - there are enough good reasons for legalization, it is dangerous to ignore scientific data regarding risks.

Re: The association between cannabis use and suicidality among men and women

#52

Post by nashke » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 9:04 AM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #49

nashke wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol is strongly associated with suicidality, but again, it's difficult to prove causality (Try randomizing people to "alcohol binging group" or "suicidal ideation group"). The association is more robust than that for cannabis. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2872355/

Do you know if there have been any mendelian randomization studies looking at alcohol and suicidality?

None that I know of, but I am not as updated on research of alcohol use disorders as I am with cannabis. One interesting frontier is using machine learning methods for causal inference (the reason I have some vague knowledge of this is that my brother is working on this...). These may hopefully allow for some interesting analyses of existing data. Here is a link for his seminar on causal inference for observational studies: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~shalit/slides.pdf

Re: The association between cannabis use and suicidality among men and women

#53

Post by the_duke » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 10:04 AM UTC

nashke wrote: post #33

savanaly wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The 'conclusion' hints at or indicates the assumption that cannabis use is the cause for increased suicide incidence. I read the abstract and conclusions closely and I didn't think they were implying that, although this is the sort of result that is classically misreported along the lines you are articulating. The conclusion is simply that there is an association between cannabis use and suicide ideation (in other w…

Couldn't have said it better. We don't claim there is some mechanism where smoking pot will make you suicidal. But we want to explore the strong association between the two, which has been shown time and again in previous studies. Our findings point to important differences between the sexes, so what I would take from our results is not "cannabis is bad", instead - "cannabis use and suicidality are complex behaviors,…

It might very well be that pot makes suicidal after prolonged use.

I wasn't criticizing, just curios.

Re: The association between cannabis use and suicidality among men and women

#54

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 7:08 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #37

cairo_x wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't pay their employees though -- if you count the people who generate the actual content as employees. Nor do they pay the academics who do the actual peer review . They pay editorial staff and tech dudes. I guess a metric shit-ton.

Retail stores don't pay their employees either, if you count the people who manufacture the actual goods. Nor do they pay the truckers who actually get the goods to the store. They pay janitorial staff and retail assistants. I guess a metric shit-ton. Yes, it's an imperfect metaphor, but it's showing that you can still provide value without being the origin of the object.

[deleted]

Re: The association between cannabis use and suicidality among men and women

#55

Post by cairo_x » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 7:24 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #31

cairo_x wrote: post #7

Weed helps you ease the cortosol onslaught of any shitty situation. Stress, depression, homelessness, etc... This reminds me of a study where depressed people were shown to have higher rates of gum disease. And just for fun there was a recent study where pot smoking has been linked to gum disease. Why even go there with your research? Why not choose any other arbitrary thing. Like comfort food, binge watching tv seri…

Please don't post snarky I-know-better-than-the-author comments on Hacker News. We're hoping for substantive, thoughtful conversation here. It's quite the extra degree of rudeness to deliver such a middlebrow dismissal directly to the person who did the work. If you really wanted to know why the study was done, you had a perfect chance to ask a polite question of its author. We detached this subthread from https://ne…

It was not a condition of the 'AMA' to ask how the study was done.

As someone with depression, I feel berating these people, not for the results, but for the subject matter, to be completely founded.

You may certainly question my social intelligence, but I may then certainly question theirs.

Re: The association between cannabis use and suicidality among men and women

#56

Post by cairo_x » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 7:29 PM UTC

openasocket wrote: post #21

cairo_x wrote: post #7

Weed helps you ease the cortosol onslaught of any shitty situation. Stress, depression, homelessness, etc... This reminds me of a study where depressed people were shown to have higher rates of gum disease. And just for fun there was a recent study where pot smoking has been linked to gum disease. Why even go there with your research? Why not choose any other arbitrary thing. Like comfort food, binge watching tv seri…

The study showed that depressed men were more likely to use weed, but not women, which doesn't seem so obvious to me.

Really? And what does it matter? And is it worth a headline? The authors are a pack of narcissistic buzz-word vampires. A pox on them them and all their ilk.

Re: The association between cannabis use and suicidality among men and women

#57

Post by dang » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 11:39 PM UTC

cairo_x wrote: post #55

dang wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post snarky I-know-better-than-the-author comments on Hacker News. We're hoping for substantive, thoughtful conversation here. It's quite the extra degree of rudeness to deliver such a middlebrow dismissal directly to the person who did the work. If you really wanted to know why the study was done, you had a perfect chance to ask a polite question of its author. We detached this subthread from https://ne…

It was not a condition of the 'AMA' to ask how the study was done. As someone with depression, I feel berating these people, not for the results, but for the subject matter, to be completely founded. You may certainly question my social intelligence, but I may then certainly question theirs.

I'm sorry to hear about your depression, but berating people is not allowed on HN, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html