Many People with Bipolar Disorder Use Cannabis. It May Sometimes Help

Marijuana has a strong attraction to people with mental health issues. A review of 53 studies found that a quarter of a combined sample of 51,756 individuals with the condition used cannabis or had a problematic pattern of consumption.

They don't go well together. Consumption may increase the risk of suicide. Can the drug's appeal be explained as a form of substance misuse? People with a mental illness are attracted to marijuana. They might be getting a benefit from it.

The University of California, San Diego's Alannah Miranda is a post-doc working with U.C.S.D. psychiatrists to explore these questions. More than 24,000 people attended the Society for Neuroscience conference earlier this month and Miranda presented her work. She talked to Scientific American about what she found in the continuing study.

The transcript of the interview has been changed.

What are you studying?

I am studying the effects of cannabis on people with a mental illness. Some people with bipolar disorder report that it helps alleviate some of their symptoms in regards to memory, attention, focus and anxiety.

At the conference show, what did you do with the study?

Our study compared healthy participants who do not use cannabis, healthy participants that do use cannabis, people with a mental illness that doesn't use cannabis, and people with a mental illness that does use cannabis.

They were tested on their willingness to engage in a task despite the fact that the potential for reward is decreasing. People who use cannabis have a lower tendency to pursue trivial tasks for an excessive amount of time. Those who took marijuana had higher risk taking and motivation levels.

The number of people in the study was not known.

So far, about 60 people have participated. We aim for about 100 in the study. It will be finished in less than a year.

There have been studies done on the effects of cannabis on people with mental illnesses. What is the difference between your study and others?

There is a lot of focus on whether the drug affects mood symptoms of the disorder or if it makes it worse. Decision-making is one of the things that tends to be ignored. The cognitive functions that are impacting people's daily functioning are being looked at.

Are you also studying animals?

I have collaborated with Young on his work on animals. We are looking at this in humans but we are also looking at this in animals in our study. We use the same cognitive tasks in mice as we do in humans. We can do certain things in animals that we can't do in humans. Dysregulation of the signaling molecule dopamine is one of the mechanisms that we theorize exist for the disorder. It is more difficult to look at specific genes in humans than it is in animals.

Do you have any theories about the effects of cannabis on the brain?

Cannabis may affect the reward and motivation processing system. Dopamine helps us achieve certain goals. The chemical dopamine activity in the brain of people with bipolar disorder might be too much.

We believe that cannabis may be reducing the excess dopamine in people with a mental illness.

Is it possible to discuss your work's implications for treatments?

There is a concern that cannabis could make the mania and psychotic symptoms of the disorder worse. I wouldn't say that people with a mental illness should use cannabis. Understanding the mechanisms of the effects of cannabis could lead to drug treatments.

What will your work look like in the future?

We are currently looking at the effects of cannabinoids on the body. One of the more promising directions we are taking is that. We want to disentangle the effects of both cannabis and cannabinoids on one another. We want to see if we can maximize the benefits of cannabis while avoiding the harmful effects. You don't get a high from it because it doesn't have the same kind of effects. There are very little data on whether or not cannabidiol is a better option for a therapy.

This is also being extended to other populations. HIV patients have the same impairments as other people. We want to study the effects of cannabis on older people who are at risk for cognitive decline. With the legalization of cannabis, more older people are turning to it as a medical treatment, but we don't know how it affects the aging brain. This is an important part of the research.