Cannabis Use and Psychosis Risk

The investigators found that cannabis use was significantly associated with psychotic disorders during adolescence (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 11.2; 95% CI, 4.6 to 27.3), but not during young adulthood (aHR, 1.3; 95% CI, 0.6 to 2.6). Adolescents who used cannabis also had a substantially higher risk for hospitalizations and emergency department visits (aHR, 26.7; 95% CI, 7.7 to 92.8), while there was no substantial risk observed in young adulthood (aHR, 1.8; 95% CI, 0.6 to 5.4). Growing Evidence Supports the Link Between Cannabis Use and Psychosis Risk https://www.psychiatryadvisor.com/news/cannabis-use-and-psychosis-risk/

Have you read the book The Dangerous Truth About Today’s Marijuana by Laura Stack? https://johnnysambassadors.org/book/

If you have small children I highly recommend this book.

Saturday Feeling Resilient – 06.22.24

Resiliency

The researchers found that people in the high resiliency group were less anxious and depressed, less prone to judge, and had activity in regions of the brain associated with emotional regulation and better cognition compared to the group with low resiliency. “When a stressor happens, often we go to this aroused fight or flight response, and this impairs the breaks in your brain,” Gupta said. “But the highly resilient individuals in the study were found to be better at regulating their emotions, less likely to catastrophize, and keep a level head,” added Desiree Delgadillo, postdoctoral researcher and one of the first authors.

The high resiliency group also had different microbiome activity than the low resiliency group. Namely, the high resiliency group’s microbiomes excreted metabolites and exhibited gene activity associated with low inflammation and a strong and healthy gut barrier. A weak gut barrier, otherwise known as a leaky gut, is caused by inflammation and impairs the gut barrier’s ability to absorb essential nutrients needed by the body while blocking toxins from entering the gut.

University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences. “Resiliency shaped by activity in the gut microbiome and brain.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/06/240621122904.htm (accessed June 22, 2024) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/06/240621122904.htm

Resilience is the capacity to remain flexible and adaptable while facing life’s challenges. It is a complex concept involving traits, environmental factors, and a learned capacity that comes from experience. https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-resilience/

Cannabis and Kids

Epidemiologic research suggests that cannabis use may be a significant risk factor for psychotic disorders. A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies estimated that lifetime cannabis users had an odds ratio of 2.58 (95% CI 1.08–6.13) for psychotic disorders compared to non-users (Moore et al., Reference Moore, Zammit, Lingford-Hughes, Barnes, Jones, Burke and Lewis2007). Another meta-analysis found an odds ratio of 3.90 (95% CI 2.84–5.34) for psychotic disorders among the most frequent cannabis users compared to non-users, suggesting dose–response (Marconi, Di Forti, Lewis, Murray, & Vassos, Reference Marconi, Di Forti, Lewis, Murray and Vassos2016). Whether cannabis use is causally related to psychotic disorders continues to be debated, with recent genetic studies raising uncertainty about the directionality of the relationship and the magnitude of association (Ganesh & D’Souza, Reference Ganesh and D’Souza2022; Gillespie & Kendler, Reference Gillespie and Kendler2021).

This study provides new evidence of a strong but age-dependent association between cannabis use and risk of psychotic disorder, consistent with the neurodevelopmental theory that adolescence is a vulnerable time to use cannabis. The strength of association during adolescence was notably greater than in previous studies, possibly reflecting the recent rise in cannabis potency. Age-dependent association of cannabis use with risk of psychotic disorder Psychological Medicine , First View , pp. 1 – 11 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291724000990

Another Reason to Exercise (your brain)

Group-based trajectory modeling identified four groups of distinct occupational cognitive demands according to the degree of routine tasks in the participants occupations during their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. The researchers analyzed the link between these trajectory groups and clinically diagnosed MCI and dementia in participants in the HUNT4 70+ Study (2017-19). Additionally, the researchers accounted for important dementia risk factors such as age, gender, educational level, income, overall health, and lifestyle habits from assessments made in 1984-86 and 1995-97.  Within age groupings the researchers looked at such occupations as primary school teacher, salesperson, nurse and caregiver, office cleaner, civil engineer, and mechanic, among others.

After adjusting for age, sex, and education, the group with low occupational cognitive demands (the high RTI group) had a 37 percent higher risk of dementia compared to the group with high occupational cognitive demands. Occupations That Are Cognitively Stimulating May Be Protective Against Later-life Dementia https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/occupations-are-cognitively-stimulating-may-be-protective-against-later-life-dementia

Link to the study abstract – https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000209353

I hope my spouse doesn’t read this or she’ll never let me retire.

Enough

In the pursuit of “fine” to “great,” we chase products. Through no fault of our own, we fall prey to messaging from social media users, algorithms, and expert marketers, urging us that this shampoo or this rug will shift the scales toward enoughness. “This is how the marketplace continues to work,” says Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor of communication at Cornell University, “which is by amplifying our inadequacies and insecurities.”

Baked into these social platforms is a natural ecosystem for comparison. In the past, people weighed themselves against celebrities in the media and those within their immediate social circles, Duffy says. Now, we can compare ourselves to the idealized version of millions of strangers online — who may be perpetuating an aesthetic trend inspiring us to buy in order to participate.

How to be enough
Our obsession with self-improvement is making us miserable. https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/24091379/how-to-be-enough-habituation-hedonic-treadmill-comparison

How to be enough.

How to have enough.

Know when enough is enough.

You’re welcome.

ATTENTION PARENTS – Social Media and Self-Diagnosis (scary charts too)

Image source – Technology and Student Well-Being: 10 Charts https://www.edweek.org/research-center/reports/technology-and-student-well-being-10-charts

In The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt lays out his argument that smartphones and social media are the key driver of the decline in youth mental health seen in many countries since the early 2010s.

The early 2010s were crucial, Haidt argues, because that was when smartphones really began to transform childhood into something unrecognizable. In June 2010, Apple introduced its first front-facing camera, and a few months later Instagram launched on the App Store. For Haidt, this was a fateful combination. Children were suddenly always online, always on display, and connected in ways that were often detrimental to their well-being. The result was a “tidal wave” of anxiety, depression, and self-harm, mostly affecting young girls.In Haidt’s telling, though, smartphones are only part of the problem. He thinks that children in the West are prevented from developing healthily thanks to a culture of “safetyism” that keeps children indoors, shelters them from risks, and replaces rough-and-tumble free play with adult-directed organized sports or—even worse—video games. For evidence of safetyism in action, Haidt contrasts a picture of a 1970s playground merry-go-round, (“the greatest piece of playground equipment ever invented”) with a modern set of play equipment designed with safety in mind and, thus, giving children less opportunity to learn from risky play.

Screen Time for Kids Is Fine! Unless It’s Not — https://www.wired.com/story/pete-etchells-jonathan-haidt-smartphones/?utm_source=pocket_saves

Next steps? Go back online, find a venture capital backed mental health provider, take a quiz, get a diagnosis that confirms your self-diagnosis, have drugs sent to you in the mail.

The scourge of self-diagnosis.

Some Cognitive Skills Improve as We Get Older

When a psychology professor in Michigan looked through his data on interpersonal conflict a decade ago, he discovered something unexpected. The study, which examined differences across cultures and age groups, seemed to show Americans got wiser as they got older. Richard Nisbett was used to research showing poorer mental skills among elderly adults, but his work found they were better at recognizing multiple perspectives, encouraging compromise, and acknowledging the limits of their own knowledge.

Perhaps, he reasoned, navigating conflict got better with age because it was such a specific, experience-based skill. Working memory, which stores short-term facts like newly learned names, may decline but, as people get older, they inevitably accrue more knowledge from having navigated similar situations throughout their lives. Now 82 years old, Nisbett recognizes the improvement in himself. “I’ve noticed situations to avoid, comments not to make, and the importance of apology,” he said.

Presidential age debate obscures a simple fact: Some cognitive skills improve as we get older — https://www.statnews.com/2024/02/22/presidential-election-age-debate-some-cognitive-skills-improve-with-age/

I was going to post this yesterday but I forgot.

Trends in Behavioral Health Medications

Nurse practitioners had the largest increases in prescribing incident prescriptions across the 5 drug classes. This is consistent with a study that found that behavioral health visits among Medicare beneficiaries conducted by psychiatric behavioral health nurse practitioners increased by 162%, whereas those by psychiatrists decreased by 6% from 2011 to 2019.35 Our study, based on incident prescription data, suggests an increasing contribution of nurse practitioners initiating medication treatment of behavioral health conditions compared with other health care practitioners.

Chai G, Xu J, Goyal S, et al. Trends in Incident Prescriptions for Behavioral Health Medications in the US, 2018-2022. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online January 10, 2024. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2023.5045 — https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2813980

Welcome to our new world of self-diagnosed ADHD, online pill mills, and “shortages” of prescription medications.

The past couple of decades have seen a continuous increase in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses. National population surveys reflect an increase in the prevalence from 6.1% to 10.2% in the 20-year period from 1997 to 2016 and experts continue to debate and disagree on the causes for this trend.1

ADHD Diagnostic Trends: Increased Recognition or Overdiagnosis? Mo Med. 2022 Sep-Oct; 119(5): 467–473.– https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9616454/

Too Old To Grow Up?

Percentage change in the leading health conditions affecting millennials in the United States from 2014 to 2018 — https://www.statista.com/statistics/1276447/percentage-change-of-the-leading-conditions-affecting-millennials

I was doing my usual Saturday morning routine, catching up on whatever was catching my attention and I came across this Scary Chart looking for ADHD incidence in Millennials. Whoa…check out the early CAD percentage increase.