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Puff and the tragic demons
December 13, 2004
Marijuana retains its image of peace and love, despite growing evidence it can unleash severe mental torment - especially among the young. Jock Cheetham assesses the case for a change of mind.
[...] Australians are smoking more - the number of 20-year-olds who have smoked cannabis has trebled in 30 years, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says. And Australians are starting younger - nearly 40 per cent of those born in the early 1980s had smoked cannabis by the time they reached 16.
Rates of anxiety and depression among young people have risen markedly in each of the past five decades, the Mental Health Council of Australia says. But for some parents who grew up during and since the counter-culture generation, cannabis continues to symbolise freedom, rebellion and broadminded perspectives. Their views are often based on out-of-date information, says Ian Hickie, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Sydney.
[...] Two of Hickie's concerns relate to mental illness - depression and the increase in diagnoses of drug-induced psychosis. "Basically, anyone who turns up with a schizophrenia-like illness and they're smoking cannabis and they're taking ecstasy, the first few times we see them, we call [it] drug-induced psychosis," he says. "But if you follow people up, the great majority of them turn out to have schizophrenia, but later on." This lag until the appearance of schizophrenia could be 10 years or more, he says.
The symptoms are disturbing, Hickie says. "Kids who are psychotic have symptoms such as social withdrawal and are not able to form relationships. Typically people will hear voices, they will develop suspicious ideas, they won't trust their family, they'll withdraw from social events, they'll often become quite apathetic."
[...] A NEW study from Maastricht University in the Netherlands has added to the evidence of links between cannabis and psychosis. The study of 2400 young Germans, published two weeks ago in the British Medical Journal, found "exposure to cannabis during adolescence and young adulthood increases the risk of psychotic symptoms later in life". The risk is even greater, the researchers say, for people who are predisposed to psychotic symptoms.
One of the Maastricht research team, Cecile Henquet, told the Herald: "If you have a family history or a personal history of mental instability you should not use cannabis." Smoking cannabis before the age of 16 carries a much higher risk of psychotic disorders and the risk rises the more frequently the drug is used.
The Maastricht study conforms with other findings, says Professor David Castle, of the University of Melbourne and the Mental Health Research Institute. "We're finding that more and more of the associations between cannabis and later mental illness, especially psychotic disorders, are being replicated. It's more difficult to say it's one study and one finding and dismiss it."
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Click here to read the full article from the Sydney Morning Herald.
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