Medical Marijuana for Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Anxiety & Mental Illness: Can It Help?

The usefulness of medical marijuana for the treatment of mental illness and disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia is an open question today. There have been only a few really good studies on this issue, and their findings are decidedly mixed. So let’s dive into the question and see if medical marijuana can help the symptoms of mental illness, or is it more likely to cause harm? The reason this is a very complex issue is because, unlike medical marijuana for chronic, debilitating pain, there’s a lot of additional factors that must be taken into account when studying mental illness and a psychoactive substance like marijuana. We’re just going to examine marijuana for the use of depression, anxiety, and bipolar symptoms in this article, because those are the populations that have had the greatest number of research studies done. Marijuana for Depression & Anxiety Here’s what one recent study found when combing the recent research literature to better understand it: Results from studies that have focused on recreational users and/or young adults are quite variable; some show a negative association between marijuana use and anxiety/depression (e.g., Denson & Earleywine, 2006; Sethi et al., 1986; Stewart, Karp, Pihl, & Peterson, 1997), others a positive association (e.g., Bonn-Miller, Zvolensky, Leen-Feldner, Feldner, & Yartz, 2005; Hayatbakhsh et al., 2007; Scholes-Balog, Hemphill, Patton, & Toumbour...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Alternative and Nutritional Supplements Disorders General Research Treatment anxiety Bipolar Disorder Cannabis Depression Medical Marijuana Source Type: blogs