By Andrew M. Seaman
NEW YORK |
Tue Dec 25, 2012 4:57pm EST
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Marijuana (cannabis) use might be related to a growth of crazy symptoms in teenagers – though a retreat could also be true: psychosis in teenagers might be related to after pot use, according to a new Dutch study.
“We have focused generally on temporal order; is it a duck or a egg? As a investigate shows, it is a bidirectional relationship,” wrote a study’s lead author Merel Griffith-Lendering, a doctoral claimant during Leiden University in The Netherlands, in an email to Reuters Health.
Previous investigate determined links between pot and psychosis, though scientists questioned either pot use increasing a risk of mental illness, or either people were regulating pot to palliate their crazy symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions.
“What is engaging in this investigate is that both processes are going on during a same time,” pronounced Dr. Gregory Seeger, medical executive for obsession services during Rochester General Hospital in upstate New York.
He told Reuters Health that researchers have been generally endangered about what tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a active skill in pot, could do to a teenager’s flourishing brain.
“That’s a really exposed duration of time for mind development,” and people with a family story of schizophrenia and psychosis seem to be some-more supportive to a poisonous effects of THC, he said.
A 2010 investigate of 3,800 Australian teenagers found that those who used pot were twice as expected to rise psychosis compared to teenagers who never smoked pot (see Reuters Health essay of Mar 1, 2010 here:).
But that investigate also found that those who suffered from hallucinations and delusions when they were younger were also some-more expected to use pot early on.
CHICKEN v. EGG
For a new study, published in a biography Addiction, a researchers wanted to see that came first: pot or psychosis.
Griffith-Lendering and her colleagues used information on 2,120 Dutch teenagers, who were surveyed about their pot use when they were about 14, 16 and 19 years old.
The teenagers also took psychosis disadvantage tests that asked – among other things – about their ability to concentrate, their feelings of loneliness and either they see things other people don’t.
Overall, a researchers found 940 teens, or about 44 percent, reported smoking pot, and there was a bidirectional couple between pot use and psychosis.
For example, regulating pot during 16 years aged was related to crazy symptoms 3 years later, and crazy symptoms during age 16 were related to pot use during age 19.
This was loyal even when a researchers accounted for mental illness in a kids’ families, ethanol use and tobacco use.
Griffith-Lendering pronounced she could not contend how most some-more expected immature pot users were to vaunt crazy symptoms after on.
Also, a new investigate can’t infer one causes a other. Genetics might also explain a couple between pot use and psychosis, pronounced Griffith-Lendering.
“We can contend for some people that cannabis comes initial and psychosis comes second, though for some people they have some (undiagnosed) psychosis (and) maybe cannabis creates them feel better,” pronounced Dr. Marta Di Forti, of King’s College, London, who was not concerned with a new research.
Di Forti, who has complicated a couple between pot and psychosis, told Reuters Health she considers pot a risk means for psychosis – not a cause.
Seeger, who was also not concerned with a new study, pronounced that there needs to be some-more open recognition of a connection.
“I consider a pot is not a submissive substance. Especially for teenagers, there should be some-more of a open health summary out there that pot has a open health risk,” he said.
Griffith-Lendering agrees.
“Given a astringency and impact of crazy disorders, impediment programs should take this information into consideration,” she said.
SOURCE: bit.ly/Rr63N8 Addiction, online Dec 7, 2012.
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