Over recent years, people in the United States have become more aware of the nation’s mental health crisis. And there’s been a lot of concern surrounding mental health and American youth in particular, considering that 11%–17% of teens in the country experience major depression in their lives, putting them at a higher risk of suicide.
The National Comorbidity Survey—Adolescent Supplement shed more light on this issue. This was a large-scale study conducted from 2001–2004 that studied 10,000 American teenagers to see how frequently they experienced mental health disorders.
Recently, a group of researchers used data from that study to explore whether there was a link between cannabis use and suicidal behavior. The authors of this study included Jesse D. Hinckley and Susan K. Mikulich-Gilbertson, professors of psychiatry specializing in substance abuse at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, along with six other researchers.
Like many studies, their findings revealed that teen cannabis use is indeed linked to an increased risk of depression and suicide. Teenagers who had used marijuana at any point in their lives were at least twice as likely to have mild or moderate depression, and at least three times as likely to have severe depression. And the more marijuana a teen had used in the past 12 months, the higher their risk of attempting suicide and having more severe depression.
There’s a push to legalize cannabis nationwide, so it’s urgent to make sure teens know the dangers of using this drug. “Just trying it once” can have devastating, irreversible effects on their mental health.
The authors’ findings were published in June 2023 in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. To read the full study, visit this page.