Alex Hum
Contributor
The link between cannabis and psychosis could be stronger than anticipated. Three youth researchers, accompanied by Catherine Willinsky, manager of national programs and projects for the Schizophrenia Society of Canada, gave a presentation on October 18 in Vanier College about the alleged link.
Among the presentation materials was a series of videos voicing personal experiences of individuals in the research project regarding cannabis use and how it affected living with psychosis.
“I’m not sure if smoking pot is what caused it or if it just brought it out in me,” said one of the interviewers. “But I do know that things started to change after I began using”.
Shannon Uren, one of the presenting researchers testifies: “marijuana really messed with my mind”. He accounts for all his efforts to stay well and successful: going back to school, keeping a job, maintaining a steady social life.
“When you lose everything including your mind and who you are yourself,” says Uren, “it’s actually really nice just to be able to go to school, and just to be able to […] have a girlfriend and have money and have a house and just […] have a good time.”
Although it is hard to say definitively that smoking marijuana will directly cause onset of psychosis, it is thought that it accelerates the process, worsens symptoms, and in some cases acts as the trigger. In Uren’s experience, for a number of people, “marijuana has brought them over.”
Uren began smoking weed in eighth grade. Two years later, at age 14, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Andrew Minderlein, also a presenting researcher, was smoking marijuana for four years before his onset of schizoaffective bipolar disorder at age 20. Another individual said in her video testimonial: “I started smoking pot when I was 20. Five years later I was hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder and psychotic symptoms”.
Scott Billias, the third presenter, used marijuana differently. He smoked for the purpose of self-medication.
“It wasn’t that people smoked weed and then they got sick; they were sick so as a coping mechanism they started smoking weed,” says Billias. “My onset of psychosis was about when I was 12, which is relatively early, and I didn’t start smoking until after that.”
These three men understand the difficulties of psychosis. They have lived through the societal stigma, but now in the program, with proper medication, none of them experience symptoms of psychosis anymore.
This is where the fight against social stigma begins. “There’s a lot of stigma being taken away from certain things. But “everybody knows somebody who has mental illness. […] says Uren Getting the word out is really important in trying to shut that stigma down”.
