Cannabis use can worsen the risk of poor mental health, finds research.
While cannabis use has been legalized and recommended for its medical and therapeutic benefits, especially for people suffering from anxiety and insomnia, newer research has found that people who have a history of cannabis use are incidentally at much graver risk of poor mental health outcomes and experiencing problems like depression, anxiety, and other severe mental issues.
The findings indicated that following the first recorded use of cannabis, patients were three times more likely to develop shared mental health problems such as depression and anxiety.
In addition, they were almost seven times more likely to develop severe mental illnesses such as psychosis or schizophrenia.
“The research reaffirms the need to ensure a public health approach to recreational drug use across the UK,” said researcher John Singh Chandan from the University of Birmingham.
“We must continue to progress measures to improve the prevention and detection of drug use as well as equitably implement the appropriate supportive measures to prevent the secondary negative health consequences,” Chandan added.
For the study, published in Psychological Medicine, the team included records from 787 GP practices around the UK gathered over 23 years between 1995 and 2018. The researchers were able to include data from 28,218 patients who had a recorded exposure to cannabis. These were matched to 56,208 patients who had not been using cannabis and controlled for sex, age, ethnicity, smoking status and other relevant characteristics.
The cannabis users also had much higher rates of having a recorded history of using other drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines.
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