Name: The Link Between High-Potency Cannabis Use and Psychosis
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Regular use of cannabis could increase an adolescent's likelihood of developing a psychiatric disorder, including schizophrenia.

As cannabis becomes more mainstream, use may come with a mental health risk.

Regular use of cannabis could increase an adolescent's likelihood of developing a psychiatric disorder, including schizophrenia.

The Link Between High-Potency Cannabis Use and Psychosis

Link Between High-Potency Cannabis Use and Psychosis

As cannabis becomes more mainstream, use may come with a mental health risk.

Body & Brain

The Link Between High-Potency Cannabis Use and PsychosisPublished: December 7, 2021Narrator: Cannabis is becoming increasingly mainstream as states legalize consumption but for some, especially young people, use may come with a risk to their mental health and there may even be a link to psychosis. Callan: I started using cannabis when I was 15 years old and my college years multiple times a day. I started getting really paranoid about things. I started feeling like people were following me. I was hearing voices and I was too afraid with all the paranoia and thinking people were listening to me like through the telephone, through the TV that I really started considering suicide. My mom is like, what's going on? And I was like, "Mom, there are things that are talking to me." And she's like, "We have to go to the hospital."Narrator: Callan was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, a chronic brain disorder that often appears in early adulthood.Symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia, which often can be managed with medications. Deepak Cyril D'Souza: What about the side effects of the medicines? Callan: They make me very tired, which is very hard. I take 11 pills in the morning and 10 before I go to bed.D'Souza: There's a lot of epidemiological evidence suggesting that exposure to cannabis, especially in young adulthood in adolescence, increases one's risk for the development of this disorder. Cannabis is not necessary or sufficient to cause schizophrenia. There may be many factors that together lead to tipping the person over the edge, such as social stress and genetic factors. Narrator: Some research suggests frequent use of high-potency cannabis could play a role in the early onset of schizophrenia.One study analyzed nine hundred cases of first psychotic episodes across Europe and Brazil and found that high-potency cannabis might have contributed to an increase of psychosis.In Denmark, a nationwide study of health records of more than 7 million individuals suggested there’s a link between the increased availability of high potency cannabis and an increase in the rate of schizophrenia associated with cannabis use disorder. Callan: Two other of my relatives who are actually much older have had psychotic symptoms. It could change your life so dramatically, and here I am eight years later at 30 and I'm still living with the repercussions of smoking marijuana. D'Souza: Overwhelming majority of people who use cannabis have limited consumption may not experience negative consequences. same as alcohol, but everyone knows of somebody who has a problem with alcohol. We can't do much about our genes but we can do something about cannabis, just as we've done with tobacco. We've convinced young people that tobacco smoking is harmful, and if we can have young people delay their use of cannabis until after their brain is developed and after they're past the risk of psychosis, that would be amazing because it's a lifelong illness.The cost of schizophrenia is massive because many people are unable to work. They remain wards of the state on disability for their entire life. Narrator: In high doses, cannabis can cause temporary psychotic-like experiences, like hallucinations and delusions.Matt Hill: So we do know that with individuals, if you give them very high doses of THC, individuals can undergo a transient psychotic episode, and that can be true of other drugs as well. We know methamphetamine and stimulants can also trigger psychotic episodes, but that is not the same as schizophrenia the disease. Narrator: We need more to data to understand the link between cannabis use and psychotic experiences and the role genetics plays.Hill: I think realistically, we're not going to ever resolve the exact nature of this relationship because in some cases it may be for some people, it is causal and for some people, it may be that they are using cannabis as a means to medicate some symptoms and for some people, it may just be this genetic association and it's unrelated to the disease per se, but the two phenomenon occur in tandem.

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The Link Between High-Potency Cannabis Use and Psychosis

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Support Provided By

Explore More

How Cannabis Affects Teens' Brains

The Cannabis Question

CBD Helps Anxiety Patients in a Clinical Trial