New research has found that alcohol, cannabis and other illicit drugs can increase the risk of developing schizophrenia later in life.
The researchers showed that a diagnosis of any substance abuse problem increased the risk of developing schizophrenia six-fold.
Cannabis increased the risk by 5.2 times, while alcohol tripled the risk. Other drugs such as hallucinogenic or amphetamines almost doubled the risk.
And the risk was still elevated 10 to 15 years after being diagnosed with substance abuse.
The study, presented at the International Early Psychosis Association meeting, included 3 million people from Danish registers. Two hundred thousand people from the registers were diagnosed with a substance abuse disorder, of which over 21,000 were also diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The data was analysed using various statistical techniques and adjusted for various factors such as gender, other psychiatric diagnoses, parents’ socioeconomic status etc.
But, like the chicken-or-egg problem, it’s impossible to tell if substance abuse causes schizophrenia or is just related.
According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, people with a mental illness are twice as likely to have a substance use problem compared to the general population. And for people with schizophrenia, the number may be as high as 50 per cent.
TOCCALife.com CEO said, “I like this article. I could write a thesis on it simply based on personal experience with clients. I can comment quickly now hoping to help. Two sayings in the program are 1. Change People, Places and Things. 2. Don’t get caught in your head by isolating yourself and self medicating. There are reasons for those rules and it makes me think the article might warrant more thought from us all. What if you don’t know those rule? What if you were stuck in the same spot and locked into your head before you realized something wasn’t right?
From Direct Experince, The previously mentioned rules don’t sum up a solution but schizophrenia appears to be UN-Diagnosed long before the client started self medicating. The torment that they lived before finding self medication and thereafter finding help to stop self medicating is always amazing to me. Those are the people that continually inspire me.”
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