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Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

cnn.com

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Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#441

Post by tenfourwookie »

Schizophrenia is a bucket diagnosis that a large number of mentally ill people are placed into because other diagnoses do not fit or do not fit completely. Once psychiatry doesn't know what's wrong with you, and your symptoms have a certain severity, you get diagnosed with schizophrenia.

This link between marijuana use and schizophrenia will be tenuous at best. Look deeper (into an article published on the well-respected academic journal that is CNN) (a intern probably wrote your article) and you'll find nothing but unscientific hogwash, irrelevant sample sizes, questionable procedure, and just about everything else you usually find that isn't helpful when the subject being discussed is repleat with cultural bias instead of fact.

In short, this is pseudoscientific poppycock written and published to sell you ads.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#442

Post by bongoman37 »

kvathupo wrote: post #16

As usual, a sensational headline averring a research article's causal hypothesis, of which the PI even calls for reproducibility. Reading such paltry science articles makes me really appreciate papers like Quanta, whose reporters seem to actually have a semblance of domain knowledge. Indeed, no discussion of the existing link between schizophrenia and tobacco smoking, in conjunction with the increased availability of…

All PIs always call for more research. Its another way of saying I need more funds.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#443

Post by jklinger410 »

quickthrowman wrote: post #376
jklinger410 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Untreated neuro-divergent people tend to use recreational drugs for medicinal purposes. And psychoactive drug usage is directly linked with the early onset of otherwise dormant schizophrenia, as well as a myriad of other mental disorders. 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,…

> And psychoactive drug usage is directly linked with the early onset of otherwise dormant schizophrenia, as well as a myriad of other mental disorders. Citation please. Drug usage tends to begun around the same age schizophrenia is typically diagnosed.

https://childmind.org/article/marijuana-and-psychosis/

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#444

Post by jklinger410 »

thaw13579 wrote: post #254
jklinger410 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Untreated neuro-divergent people tend to use recreational drugs for medicinal purposes. And psychoactive drug usage is directly linked with the early onset of otherwise dormant schizophrenia, as well as a myriad of other mental disorders. 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,…

To be clear, there is science that is compatible with THC increasing the risk of psychosis (and perhaps that CBD is protective). I would agree that some are self medicating, but the data also shows that dosage, THC/CBD mixture, and age of use each elevate psychosis risk over random controls [1][2]. It would be great to do double blinded experiments to test this more definitely, but we don't due to unethical reasons.…

I'm not trying to form a distinction between exacerbating and triggering psychosis in people who have a predisposition. But I think it's unfair to call them "otherwise healthy" as their psychosis, BPD, bi-polar, etc can manifest at any point in their life.

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.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#445

Post by oblib »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #437
oblib wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To fair and accurate I cherry picked TWO studies You didn't cite or include a link to even one. You just tossed a load of bullshit here and hoped it would stick. By the way... one of those cherry picked links goes to Scientific American's website. Hard to do better than that even if you are picking cherries.

You have the power to search for "cannabis iq" and find the literature. Generally I expect some basic scientific literacy on HN. But of course I should have learned by now to expect science denialism when ego is at stake. If you want a concrete source look at any of the studies that cite the twin studies, including the meta-analysis from this year. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici... Scien…

They might be right about "makes you smarter". I mean, here you are complaining that SA isn't "peer reviewed", which is pretty stupid because they're publishing the results of studies done by others, not doing or controlling them.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#446

Post by meowface »

dcolkitt wrote: post #440
meowface wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The evidence seems to strongly indicate that nicotine is a powerful antipsychotic. Source? It's commonly known that there's a very high nicotine use rate among people with schizophrenia, but I haven't heard that it has antipsychotic properties. It likely temporarily helps with certain symptoms, but doesn't necessarily reduce psychosis. I think it may generally be used as self-medication for the negative rather than…

As is often the case on these type of topics, Slate Star Codex had a really good roundup of the evidence: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/11/schizophrenia-no-smoki...

Interesting post. I think nicotine is probably a valuable nootropic for most people and for schizophrenics (though extremely unhealthy if it's consumed via smoking tobacco), but I don't think that post is at all trying to argue that "The evidence seems to strongly indicate that nicotine is a powerful antipsychotic."

Rather, it says a single study found that, when controlling for confounders, smokers in their sample were less likely to get schizophrenia, and heavy smokers were much less likely to get schizophrenia. (When not controlling for confounders, they were more likely to get schizophrenia.)

First, "antipsychotic" doesn't necessarily imply "reduces chance of developing schizophrenia". Modern-day antipsychotics generally seem to be blunt instruments designed to dampen acute states of psychosis at that moment, often by doing things like antagonizing dopamine receptors.

Something that lowers the risk of developing schizophrenia won't necessarily be an antipsychotic in this sense, even if it could be considered anti-"psychotic disorder development". As far as I know, nicotine doesn't work as an antipsychotic in the sense of it helping to stop an ongoing psychotic episode. It may temporarily improve functioning for someone in such a state, but it may not make them feel less delusional or paranoid, for example. Or at least I'm not aware of evidence of that. And, conversely, I don't know if taking antipsychotics actually reduces the chance of developing schizophrenia if you aren't currently diagnosed with it.

And this is just a single study, cited by the author of Beware the Man of One Study (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-...). He definitely is not trying to claim that this is overall strong evidence for nicotine being a powerful antipsychotic. As he mentions in it, controlling for confounders is very complex and difficult.

So, it seems plausible it could possibly help reduce the chance of developing schizophrenia, but there's definitely not strong evidence of it at this time. The only strongly supported phenomenon I know of is that schizophrenics very commonly use it, with some evidence that it may temporarily reduce negative symptoms and improve cognitive functioning.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#447

Post by cloverich »

heavyset_go wrote: post #299
mthoms wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: My half-sister is a diagnosed schizophrenic and life-long weed smoker. It seems to me (and her doctors agree) that the two are absolutely related. She was likely predisposed to schizophrenia (because of her father - which we don't share) but I often wonder if it would have progressed the way it did absent the heavy smoking. I say this also as a pot smoker myself (but only lightly in the past decade or so).…

People with schizophrenia-related disorders are likely to use substances to deal with the negative symptoms[1] of the disorders. For example, there is a high correlation between having schizophrenia and consuming nicotine[2]: > A strong association between schizophrenia and tobacco smoking has been shown in worldwide studies. Smoking is especially high in those diagnosed with schizophrenia, with estimates ranging fro…

Nicotine also alleviates the (substantial) side effects from commonly used medications from what I remember. I think your point is generally true, but in the case of Marijuana I do remember as it being specifically a precipitant of an episode. Schizophrenics aren't awlays in a psychotic state in the same way manic depressives aren't always in a manic / depressive state. I believe the general perception is that pot would cause a person to become psychotic more often / earlier but not be outright causitive if that makes sense.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#448

Post by PhasmaFelis »

jbuhbjlnjbn wrote: post #306
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very much not universal. Some people use moderation, some people go crazy on it. It's always been that way, for anything. There are drinkers who will have a couple of drinks, get pleasantly buzzed, and enjoy their evening, and there's people who get completely smashed every time. Same thing for food--over 40% of Americans are obese now. It would be very surprising if there weren't (at least) a substantial mino…

Reckless people abusing substances is not a sound argumment against the substances. With food the issue is how our body is tricked to not feel full when in fact through more sugar and fat he got way too much calories. Then getting addiced to sugar and fat. While of course very problematic, that's a different matter, not directly comparable.

I'm not making an argument against marijuana. I'm saying that "humans always consume in moderation" is an nonsensical argument for anything.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#449

Post by jbuhbjlnjbn »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #448
jbuhbjlnjbn wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reckless people abusing substances is not a sound argumment against the substances. With food the issue is how our body is tricked to not feel full when in fact through more sugar and fat he got way too much calories. Then getting addiced to sugar and fat. While of course very problematic, that's a different matter, not directly comparable.

I'm not making an argument against marijuana. I'm saying that "humans always consume in moderation" is an nonsensical argument for anything.

Well...depends. If moderation is absolutely needed and only slight overdose leads to death, then yes, do not count on moderation and common sense as an absolute.

In general though, by nature's design, people start to consume everything unknown slow and increase the amount/dosage. That is how we function.

The fact some people do not know moderation, for various reasons, is not a sound argument for prohibition. Some will always abuse anything.

You can die of drinking too much water, and certainly people did in the past. Can you prevent that from happening, by controlling the access to water somehow? No.

In my opinion the more nonsensical idea is to try to forcefully protect people from doing harm to themselfes, when common sense and normal behavior will do on its own. There is free will and autonomy over the own body. That's the limit of regulation.

The better aproach is education in a honest, factual way.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#450

Post by code_duck »

code_duck wrote: post #267
tremon wrote: post #30

So, more schizophrenic people are self-medicating with marijuana now that it's more readily available?

I had a girlfriend with a brother he was schizophrenic. He had a classic break with Ronald Reagan directly addressing him through the television and all that. Like most patients, he did not like the side effects of anti-psychotics. He tended to drink light beer all day. At some point he started smoking cannabis and said it was the only thing that had made the voices go away for him. However, this effect seem to go aw…

Nice to make an illiterate sounding typo in the first sentence. Of course I meant “who was schizophrenic.”
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