In a recent study on 7,362 adults, Canadian researchers found that cannabis use improved depression and anxiety at 12 and 18 months in adults diagnosed with depression and anxiety long term.
The study will be published in Psychiatry Research in its upcoming July issue.
Researchers noted that reliable evidence to support the use of cannabis to treat anxiety is lacking, thus they conducted a retrospective database study of Canadian medical marijuana patients who received their cannabis from Harvest Medicine a network of clinics in the country.
43.9% of the patients (46.9% men and 53.1% women) reported anxiety as the reason for using cannabis and 25.9% reported depression. The average age of the sample was 49.8.
The scores for patients with anxiety went down over time with the most notable decreases taking place between 1 and 3 months after treatment and 2 years later.
The most notable drop for patients with depression took place within the first 3 months of treatment.
“This study provides some evidence to support the effectiveness of medical cannabis as a treatment for anxiety and depression,” concluded the researchers.
Photo by Bret Kavanaugh on Unsplash.
