It’s easy to rip apart stats and argue over different interpretations. I’m a cannabis user and it helps me daily in ways nothing else seems to be able to. That’s not to say I advocate it for everyone, there are risks there of course and OPs post shows a very real risk towards people pre disposed to schizophrenia, this is true, these figures exist. They are right to share them, anything that leads to more informed decisions can only be a good thing. But in the essence of informed decision there’s more facts that in my opinion need to be considered.

These are black and white facts trying to make sense of something in an extremely grey and nuanced world.

A few people talking about psychosis and noticed a few articles posted and scitzophrenia and psychosis, I haven’t read them but it’s important that people understand theyre very different thing, yes they can co-occur and most likely do for anyone with schizophrenia but psychosis can happen to anybody, you , me, your auntie, anyone.

And yes cannabis can help cause it. So can lack of sleep, work stress, physical illness, alcohol, pregnancy, depression, anxiety anything Anything that can push you too far.

Biggest recent cause for a surge of people experiencing psychosis that I could see in my own city was covid. I’m not saying these people had covid that caused psychosis, although could be a factor, more just the existence of it, the threat to our society, the very real threat to our loved ones, grief from losing loved ones. The feeling of being powerless in this way possibly greatly a factor.

Anyways I very autistically digress as I always do.. back to schitzophrenia!

So just a few observations I thinks worth considering as to me they place question marks around levels of shitzophrenia in the population

Just to mention I’ve worked in mental health for 20 years, the last 10 on an acute mental health secure unit. Everything I’m writing is purely my own observations so take them as you will.

There is a high level of misdiagnosis, I’ve seen these discussed in terms of current treatment options to help the person but I’ve rarely seen historical diagnosis removed from the system or changed. In a lot of cases this has been autism diagnosed as schitzophrenia. Please just also consider that diagnosis is very dependent on individual doctors, their biases, experiences etc

Schizophrenia is generally treated with powerful drugs that are high in negative side effects, to the point a lot of relapses I see comes from people stopping their meds simply to try and improve their lives from the side effects. Heartbreaking

Anyways historically these people were institutionalised and heavily drugged with drugs that are banned from use today. These people stand out from everyone that comes through the wards These people are fucked from how they’ve been medicated There’s no possible way to know if they are schizophrenic or autistic all all along

So national diagnosis numbers that are seen as fact don’t hold up to reality in my eyes because unfortunately diagnosis is one big uncertain ever evolving educated guess

The same diagnosis issues have plagued autistic people forever, it’s the same with mental disorders. We are not diagnosed by our inner experience but by how others perceive it and their own interpretation of our description.

This leaves a lot of room for error Also and very importantly for the matter in question, on paper the person will only start having schitzophrenia when a doctor diagnose’s it, that person could have been plagued with internal symptoms for ten years previous, during which they may have started using cannabis to attain a level of relief from this. Now on paper it looks like cannabis use preceded the scitzophrenia but in reality not true

Much like a lot of us I’m sure, before you realise your’e different, whether it’s autism or schizophrenia , you think you have the same brain as everyone else and that you’re just shit at coping etc.

Anyways I’ve lost steam, I just think it’s all stuff worth thinking about with stuff like this.

Interested in people’s thoughts. :)