Marijuana Linked to Mental Health Risks in Young Adults

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Over the last decade of diagnosing countless young patients with new psychotic disorders, one striking result has stuck out for New York City psychiatrist Dr. Ryan Sultan.

“Of all the people I’ve diagnosed with a psychotic disorder,” he said, “I can’t think of a single one who wasn’t also positive for cannabis.”

Sultan, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia Irving Medical Center, is one of many experts raising serious concerns about the increasing marijuana use by adolescents and young adults.

And the evidence is growing of marijuana’s association with psychiatric disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, especially in young men.

New research published this month, involving millions of people worldwide over decades, is adding to worries that heavy use of high-potency cannabis and legalization of recreational weed in many U.S. states could exacerbate the nation’s mental health crisis in young adults.

“There is a big sense of urgency not just because more people are smoking marijuana, but because more people are using it in ways that are harmful, with higher and higher concentration of THC,” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), said in an interview.

One of the studies, from researchers in Denmark in collaboration with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, found evidence of an association between cannabis use disorder and schizophrenia. The finding was most striking in young men ages 21-30, but was also seen in women of the same age.