Hasn't this study / analysis already been done? And I'm pretty sure that it was established that if you have schizophrenia already waiting to come to the surface, marijuana will probably trigger that. But not cause it.
If it caused it, there would've been a massive notable increase in people suddenly "catching" schizophrenia like it's an airborne virus, anywhere that it was legalized or decriminalized.
Yeah it's basically known that anything psychoactive can bring about otherwise latent/dormant schizophrenia.
This is true for mdma, lsd, thc, mushrooms, etc.
Basically if there has been schizophrenia in your family, stay away from psychoactive drugs.
I share those thoughts
As someone with a diagnosis of schizophrenia going on a decade now - I sure would like it if the mental "health" industry would quit using my condition/identity as a scare tactic against cannabis use. Let alone equating it with psychosis.
It's really no ones business whose choosing to activate which brain circuits, with a substance humanity has been using for over four MILLENIA now! It's part of humanity's shared history and culture. It's actually the past 70 years of prohibition that have been the abboration... And life is a bit broader than the assignment of conditions to people and character types which the industry has devoted its self to.
These articles under this broader analysis, really do look like propaganda. Just another way to label and control people in service of Capitalism, where health is a functional worker, or an ideologically sound Capitalist. Because that's the underlying truth mental health claims obscure. Those who fit in are deemed "healthy" those having any type of alternate experience of life or themselves are deemed ill. That's what that industry and it's history comes down to.
This is the same industry by the way that tortured people in assylums, lobotomized anyone who was too loud, and sterilized gay people. It's also the industry that pioneered the T4 gassing program in early Nazi Germany. Because in that social/political/historical context, the mass killings of assylums patients was seen as a sanitation issue, making the German people "healthier" by removing the "unhealthy" stock.
I raise this not to make some Godwin style argument, but to say this is how these industries and the concept of health its self is manufactured by the ideological and social values of the times. This is why it's important to question things critically and look at broader viewpoints and understandings.
This headline is worded in the most scare-tactic-y way possible. Schizophrenia affects something like 0.5% of the population, which means that, according to this study, it affects 2% of heavy cannabis users. Phrasing it as 4 times more likely to develop schizophrenia makes it sound like it is a likely outcome, rather than a still-probablistically-very-low chance.
Also causation vs correlation. Isn't it likely that people with schizophrenia are self medicating, especially before diagnosis and treatment? I know that happens for other undiagnosed and misdiagnosed neurological conditions like autism and ADHD.
Although this meta-analysis shows a strong and consistent association between cannabis use and psychosis, a causal link cannot be unequivocally established.
a causal link cannot be unequivocally established
To clarify, we can't even attempt to prove causation due to users self selecting to use cannabis, especially at high dosages at young ages.
So it's not like people try to find causation and failed, we ethically can't even do the experiments required to see if there's causation. Because to do that modern scientists would have to pull the same experiments the CIA did with LSD in the 60s.
We'd have to dose people (kids really) who don't want dosed or even really know it's happening.
So we can't say the absence of proven causation means anything.
Academically speaking, other than it being informative for some, I can't seem to understand the purpose of posting this article in this community. Please enlighten me! ๐
Anti-Scizophrenics Propaganda.
The majority of people with a schizophrenia diagnosis are non-violent.
Ok but what If I live with people who chain smoke cannabis and Im a teetotaler? I live with people who chain smoke cannabis all day, everyday and I cant really affodd to go anywhere else....except for a homeless shelter... but ALL the homeless shelters where I live are super filled.
Ive been a teetotaler my whole life. And Im 30 now and STILL a teetotaler so Im pretty sure we can all agree I will be a teetotaler till forever.
So why do I as a teetotaler have to pay for what others do? Why am I not allowed to have my own tiny , cannabis-free place to live? Im completely peaceful, I dont have a single violent incident on my record.
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