Cannabis use is very prevalent among adolescents, but can cannabis have long-term negative effects on the mental health of young people? Connection between cannabis use at young age and schizophrenia is very well researched topic, but not much is known about the long-term risk for depression disorder and anxiety disorder development in adolescent cannabis users.
In this article, we present review paper titled “Association of Cannabis Use in Adolescence and Risk of Depression, Anxiety, and Suicidality in Young Adulthood – A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis” that was published in February 2019. This paper was authored by dr. Gabriella Gobbi et al. from the McGill University, Canada, and was published in the JAMA psychiatry scientific journal.
Authors performed meta-analysis on the data from 11 unique clinical trials with total of around 23.000 participants who were either adolescent cannabis users of control non-users. In this two cohorts, incidence of depression and anxiety disorders were followed in the young adulthood period, namely between 18 and 32 years of age. Previous history of mental illness was taken into account in all analyses.
After comparing mental health in adolescent cannabis users and controls, authors found that:
- Adolescent cannabis users had 37% higher odds to develop depression in young adulthood;
- Adolescent cannabis users had 50% higher odds to develop suicide ideation in young adulthood;
- Adolescent cannabis users had 3.5-times higher odds for suicide attempts in young adulthood;
- Odds for developing the anxiety disorder did not significantly differ between the groups.
This implies that adolescence is the vulnerable period for brain development, and during this period cannabis use should be avoided. Even though previous history of mental illness was considered in the analyses, due to the nature of the analysed data, this results show association rather than direct causal relationship between adolescent cannabis use and depression development in young adulthood.
For more information, please consider reading the full scientific paper. Also, check out the video summary on our instagram page.
