The question of cannabis

The question of cannabis comes up frequently both in my professional setting and amongst people I socialise with and the school community in which I am involved. I do not profess to be an expert in this area, either clinically or in terms of policy, but I do have my own thoughts and professional experience around cannabis.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the development of our services at PBH has been the role of Case Management and Behavioural Health Coaching to assist individuals and families impacted by psychotic illness. Psychosis and schizophrenia can be devastating and can alter lives forever, not only for the afflicted but also for the affected. Schizophrenia is mostly managed using medication which can have pretty severe side effects and often those affected will stop taking medication against medical advice. This can lead to readmission to hospital for long periods of time, distress and disruption both to those who care about and for the person afflicted. We are immensely  proud of the positive impact we have been able to have on families in terms of monitoring, medication compliance, socialisation and more for families experiencing this.

One of the trends we have noticed is that every single call we have had about someone being admitted for psychotic illness to hospital involves someone who was also using cannabis. They were also all between the age of 15 and 40 (which is the age where psychotic illness is most likely to present itself). I asked one of the psychiatrists we work with how effective rapid hospitalisation was following a psychotic episode and he told me that 50% recovered and 50% remained with a psychotic (schizophrenia) diagnosis. Those are terrible odds!

So, what has this got to do with my views on cannabis? Well, the research around cannabis and psychotic illness is far from complete. We know there is a much higher incidence and correlation between cannabis use and schizophrenic disease. There is no definitive evidence on caus