According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate in the United States has been rising steadily since 1999—including for teenagers. Suicide isn’t just a U.S.-crisis, either. From 1990, global yearly deaths by suicide have risen by 20,000.
Studying cannabis use may be a key part of the solution. (There are clear links between schizophrenia and suicide, cannabis and suicide, and cannabis and schizophrenia.)
This was the catalyst that led nine researchers, including Valerio Ricci and Enrico Cristofori, professors at the University of Turin, to conduct a literature review studying the links between cannabis use and suicide in greater depth.
The researchers compiled a list of studies published from 2010–2012 on PubMed, Psycinfo, and Scopes. All studies had to do with patients (1) diagnosed with schizophrenia, (2) with non-affective (not mood-related) psychotic disorders induced by cannabis, (3) with current or past use of cannabis, and (4) who were at a risk for suicide. Further screening the studies by certain exclusion criteria, they selected 12 articles for analysis. Beyond the studies’ main findings, the researchers evaluated each study’s sample size, diagnosis criteria, and limitations.
Their findings—published in March 2023 in Psychiatria Danubina, an international, peer-reviewed journal—indicated a potential positive correlation of cannabis use with increased suicide risk, especially in men. Nine of the 12 articles linked cannabis consumptions to more suicidal ideation, behavior, and attempts. In one of the studies, the samples included 50 subjects with psychosis induced by synthetic cannabis. In the United States, exposure to synthetic cannabis, which is often unregulated and manufactured with toxic chemicals, has increased in recent years. This has led to thousands of calls to poison centers, and in 2022, more than one-third of the 5,022 reported cases of exposure had “serious medical outcomes.”
To better understand cannabis use, the researchers identified a need for future researchers to do the following:
- Homogenize data collection instruments
- Investigate what kind of cannabis and how much cannabis people are using
- Study samples that better represent the population
- Study how cannabis and other suicide risk factors are linked
- Clarify the direct relationship between cannabis and suicide risk
- Clarify how cannabis use and depression are correlated
To read the full literature review, visit this page.