Cannabis Use In Young Adults

This study was undertaken by Patton et al and was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and Victorian Health Promotion Foundation to find out whether teenagers who use cannabis are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety as young adults. The rate of cannabis use has risen dramatically over the past two decades but there are still a lot of questions around its physical and psychological effects. Although there aren’t many studies on the topic, cannabis use has been linked to depression and anxiety with people who use it daily reporting high levels of anxiety, depression, fatigue, and their motivation is low. This study aims to determine whether cannabis use leads to depression and anxiety. Whether depression and anxiety leads to cannabis use and whether these relationships
66% of males and 52% of females had used cannabis at least once with 10% and 4% using it on a daily basis. The rates of reported depression and anxiety increased with cannabis use. This pattern was clearest in females. The study found that young women who used cannabis daily were five times more likely to suffer from depression or anxiety than non-users. This may be explained by underlying characteristics that predispose to both anxiety and depression as well as a harmful effect of cannabis on mental health. While there was a clear link between cannabis use in teenagers and depression in young adults there was no such link shown between depression in teenagers and cannabis use in young adults. This suggests that cannabis was not being used as self-medication. This study showed that regular use of cannabis may have an adverse effect on mental health and that if cannabis use by young people could be reduced so could the amount of incidences of depression and