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Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

bloomberg.com

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Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#91

Post by throwawayadvsec »

bjourne wrote: post #70
elliekelly wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious how we could ever reasonably parse cause and effect here? I think it’s possible smoking a lot of marijuana triggers something in certain people that causes schizophrenia but I also think it’s possible that people in the early stages of schizophrenia might seek out marijuana as a way of self-soothing. Or maybe it could even be a bit of both?

FTA: "For example, in Denmark, the incidence of schizophrenia steadily increased from 2000 to 2012 (Kühl, Laursen, Thorup, & Nordentoft, Reference Kühl, Laursen, Thorup and Nordentoft2016), and the schizophrenia population attributable risk fraction (PARF) for CUD increased three- to fourfold over the past two decades, parallel to increases in THC concentration (Hjorthøj, Posselt, & Nordentoft, Reference Hjorthøj, Po…

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/DNK/denmark/healthcare...

In 2000 Denmark was spending 2496$ yearly per capita on healthcare, in 2012 it was 6004$(taking inflation into account: 2496$ in 2000 was 3,327.91$ in 2012)

Maybe they just got better at detecting it?

Your reasoning is akin to saying that it's likely that vaccines cause autism because of some overlapping charts, correlation is not causation.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#92

Post by sjc02060 »

xupybd wrote: post #88

My father was a mental health social worker. He worked with youths, mainly teens. In his experience the vast majority of teens that ended up in his hospital had some drug fueled episode that led to their mental health crisis. He told me that he didn't think the drugs caused the mental illness but we're often the trigger. That is these kids already had a mental illness that had not started to present symptoms until it…

Is that to assume these kids would've got mentally ill anyway, just later down the line?

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#93

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

peterfirefly wrote: post #11
16bitvoid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to its validity, but the way it was explained to me from a neuroscientist a few years ago is that the general hypothesis now is that some people have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia and that predisposition sort of lies dormant until triggered. That would explain how both could be true: it could be genetic and triggered by environment/trauma.

There are enough cases of identical twins where one twin gets it and the other doesn't that we are certain it can't just be genetic. We are also certain that genes matter. We even know roughly which genes and that many of the variants that increase the risk are de novo mutations. We don't know much more than that, though.

It's difficult to believe that there are many sets of identical twins out there where one was abused and the other treated well or whatever.

Were these identicals raised apart, or together? Are there enough of each to see a difference in rates between those raised together and apart?

Whatever the triggers are, I can't help but think that they're subtle and unmemorable.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#94

Post by mensetmanusman »

yieldcrv wrote: post #26
rdruxn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would counter that by pointing out that if your aim is to achieve a certain degree of bioavailability of TCH, you'd have to smoke a larger quantity of a lower-potency product, thus exposing yourself to more of the combustion by-products than necessary.

I’m primarily an edibles consumer I wish marijuana use wasn’t assumed to be “smoking” by default most questionnaires and even dating apps are like do you smoke marijuana

More Americans smoke MJ now than cigarettes.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#95

Post by autoexec »

sosodev wrote: post #56
lisasays wrote: post #48

Original journal article (apparently not linked to in the Bloomberg piece): Association between cannabis use disorder and schizophrenia stronger in young males than in females (May 4 2023) https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici... Interestingly, the journal article doesn't bother to mention how cannabis use disorder (CUD) is defined; however, Bloomberg's description "frequent use despite negativ…

Oh that's interesting. I thought the linked review study was what they were referencing. Why would they reference a study as the basis for the entire article without linking to it? .-. This really seems like bad journalism for the sake of clickbait.

It feels like I see this a lot more recently and not just with science articles. Someone will write an entire article about a subject and never provide enough information for anyone to reach any informed opinion about it at all.

It might be an article about a controversial statement someone made, but they'll never quote or link to what was actually said and instead only talk about the drama surrounding it. When the article is about the text of a proposed law, the law is rarely linked to and is often not even named. It feels like I see way more links to random people's tweets from news sources than links to actual sources. I guess commentary gets more clicks than content, but I the content is what actually matters and is usually what I'm interested in.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#96

Post by [deleted] »

peterfirefly wrote: post #11
16bitvoid wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to its validity, but the way it was explained to me from a neuroscientist a few years ago is that the general hypothesis now is that some people have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia and that predisposition sort of lies dormant until triggered. That would explain how both could be true: it could be genetic and triggered by environment/trauma.

There are enough cases of identical twins where one twin gets it and the other doesn't that we are certain it can't just be genetic. We are also certain that genes matter. We even know roughly which genes and that many of the variants that increase the risk are de novo mutations. We don't know much more than that, though.

[deleted]

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#97

Post by wahern »

elliekelly wrote: post #59
matthewbauer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, schizophrenia is really rare in accounts before the 1800s. It appears to be a modern disease, which would make it seem like it would be environmental. Another interesting thing about schizophrenia is it's much more common in cities, even after controlling for drug use and ethnicity[1]. Which again makes it seem like something that was rare in the past. [1]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-b…

Does it show schizophrenia is caused by living in the city or does it show that cities tend to have more homeless people?

It's a complex function involving social and environment stressors which effect progression, and social and cultural context which effect manifestation, and there's also feedback between manifestation and progression.

I think it's widely accepted, albeit in a somewhat loose way, that the reason "schizophrenia" was not previously attested is because society explained the behaviors differently and often in less negative terms such that there was less positive feedback that negatively effected progression and manifestation. An archetypal example would be that someone who experienced hallucinations might be understood to be highly spiritual, a mystic, or just quirky. Moreover, people lived in more tightly knit family and social groups, so someone who had trouble taking care of themselves would be more likely to live with or near compassionate family members. And if someone did become a poorly kempt recluse, that didn't by itself turn them into complete social pariahs, so they could more easily have some minimal normative social relations. OTOH, if someone just completely fell apart and died from exposure, or antagonized the wrong person and was killed, the cause wouldn't have been attributed to a mental disease, per se.

And the effect of culture goes even deeper. Hallucinations among those living in modern, western societies tend to be more paranoid and violent; more likely to involve the threat of "the government" or "they" than, say, a beneficent god or playful tree fairy. Or more specifically, as seen in many recent anti-Asian assaults, acting out racial animus received from the culture. The increased negativity in hallucinations and behaviors feeds back into progression directly (more stress from the hallucinations) and indirectly (people are more afraid and wary of you, so you more quickly become separated from supportive social networks).

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#99

Post by kayodelycaon »

whats_a_quasar wrote: post #41

There's a really interesting line of research that suggests Schizophrenia is a spectrum, rather than a binary. Lots of people have personality traits that are similar to schizophrenics or have genetic risk factors for the condition. Some of those people develop the full disorder, and some don't. There's evidence that the reason for the split is that psychosis is itself damaging. Once someone has a psychotic episode,…

Psychosis can do a lot of damage. I had a 4-month-long psychotic break that eventually led to me being diagnosed bipolar.

It several years to recover from but I think some of the damage is permanent. I feel like I've lost a lot of memory function but I can't remember what things were like before. And it's difficult to separate that out from medication side-effects at this point.

What I do know is caffeine gives me panic attacks now (even decaf coffee is too much) and I can't function well enough to hold a job without medication.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#100

Post by blacksmith_tb »

SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #62
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Betting that was supposed to read "made legal" but the point is clear, the link is very well known both to the medical world and culturally at large. The question of mass shootings and cannabis is interesting, it doesn't seem as likely that someone, even experiencing serious paranoid schizophrenia would go out into the world shooting (instead of barricading themselves), but then I haven't seen statistics for the use…

I'm guessing that this statistic wouldn't be very helpful or interesting. Even if the number is 100%, they all drink water and eat food too. A more interesting statistic would be rate of 1st-3rd degree murders committed on different drugs, and/or what percentage of cannabis users commit violent crimes in general.

Sure, correlation is not causation at all, though notably 99.999% of water drinking food eaters don't commit mass murder. My knee-jerk assumption is that stoners are not as likely to rush around committing violent crimes as drunks or people on meth, but maybe that's over-optimistic.
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