Studies of Marijuana Depression

Teenagers and children smoking marijuana have a much higher risk of developing marijuana depression, although whether this drug itself is blaming is not clear.

Some studies have proved a link between marijuana usage and risks of depression as well as anxiety disorders, though others have failed to prove this association. Besides, it has been unintelligible if marijuana use itself, or other circumstance, is responsible for it.

To study it, researchers used info collected from about 85,000 adults in seventeen countries participating in World Health Organization studies. The partakers were screened for the presence of depression spells - enduring feelings of sadness as well as other symptoms, like appetite changes plus sleep problems, that lasted for two weeks and even more - then asked to remember when they'd first begun having these episodes. Those that said they were 17 and older when marijuana depression first hit were regarded as cases. Almost 10,000 participants found out the association of marijuana and depression and 41,000 participants had no past and current depression.

Of the marijuana depression group, 9% said that they had smoked the drug before 17 years old, when the same was 7% of the comparison group. Also, a modest association was discovered between the drug smoking before 17 years old and the options of suffering depression in the future. Early marijuana use in the USA was linked to a 50% growth in the risk of increasing a depression spell after 17 years. The connection stayed when factors such as partakers self-reported recent drug use, drinking and smoking habits, as well as history of such mental health problems as anxiety and phobias were considered. The power of the marijuana depression association did weaken, though, when the depression researchers factored in such childhood conduct problems as skipping school, shoplifting as well as getting into fights.