Australian researchers found that marijuana users who developed psychosis were 2.7 years younger than nonusers who became psychotic. Other sorts of substance abuse sped up psychosis by 2 years, but alcohol alone showed no effect. The result were published online by the Archives of General Psychiatry.
"It is a wonderful meta-analysis," Dr. William Eaton, chairman of the mental health department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Shots after reviewing the paper. The work is both "timely and well done," he says, and adds to the evidence that "there is an association between using cannabis and psychosis."
Proving causation is a high bar, and Eaton says this paper can't be said to go that far. "I think it could be true, but there's no real compelling evidence of that."
Still, he says, the researcher's consolidation of the literature is valuable and important. And the finding that marijuana is associated with earlier onset of severe mental illness is troubling, Eaton says. Even a few years can make a big difference in how a young person's life unfolds. Someone who becomes mentally ill at 22 has a better prognosis than someone struck at 18.
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