Elevated schizotypy relates to similar cognitive attenuations as seen in psychosis and cannabis/polydrug use. Also, in schizotypal populations cannabis and polydrug (including licit drug) use are enhanced. These cognitive attenuations may therefore either be a behavioral marker of psychotic (-like) symptoms or the consequence of enhanced drug use in schizotypal populations. To elucidate this, w...

INTRODUCTION Cannabis use is strongly associated with the use and abuse/dependence of other illicit drugs. Gateway and common liabilities models have been employed to explain this relationship. We sought to examine this association using a combination of the discordant twin design and modeling methods. METHOD We assess the relationship between early cannabis use and the subsequent use and abu...

OBJECTIVE To explore the relationship between cannabis use and self-reported dimensions of psychosis in a population of university students presenting for any reason to primary care. METHOD One thousand and forty-nine students attending the Student Health Unit, National University of Ireland, Galway, completed self-report questionnaires on alcohol and substance misuse, non-clinical dimensions...

Cannabis use is associated with onset of psychosis in individuals vulnerable for developing schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. The present study addressed three knowledge gaps pertaining to this issue: 1) clarifying the incidence of cannabis use in schizotypal individuals, 2) examining how cannabis use is related to psychosocial and physiological problems in schizotypy and interest in treatment,...

Cannabis use disorders (CUDs) are the most prevalent substance use disorders among adolescents in treatment. Yet, little is known about the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying adolescent CUDs. Studies in adult cannabis users suggest a significant role for cognitive control and cannabis-oriented motivational processes, such as attentional bias, approach bias, and craving in CUDs. The curren...

AIMS Our aim was to profile alcohol and cannabis initiation and to characterize the effects of developmental and environmental risk factors on changes in average drug use over time. DESIGN We fitted a two-part random effects growth model to identify developmental and environmental risks associated with alcohol and cannabis initiation, initial average use and changes in average use. PARTICIP...

BACKGROUND The present study examined the relation between two different acculturation measures (i.e., linguistic acculturation and the acculturation strategies integration, separation and marginalization) and past year cannabis use. Additionally, we studied the mediating role of affiliation with cannabis-using peers. METHOD Data were utilized from i4culture, a Dutch study on immigrant adoles...

The strongest evidence that cannabis use may be a risk factor for later psychosis comes from a Swedish cohort study which found that heavy cannabis use at age 18 increased the risk of later schizophrenia sixfold. 2 This study could not establish whether adolescent cannabis use was a consequence of pre-existing psychotic symptoms rather than a cause. We present the first prospective longitudinal...

BACKGROUND While increasing evidence suggests that cannabis use may play a role in the development of schizophrenia in some young people, less is known about the strength and specificity of its relationship to latent schizophrenia liability, i.e., schizotypal personality disorder traits. AIMS Determine the predictive value of cannabis use during childhood and early adolescence on schizotypal ...

OBJECTIVE Comorbidity between anxiety and cannabis use is common yet the nature of the association between these conditions is not clear. Four theories were assessed, and a fifth hypothesis tested to determine if the misattribution of stress symptomology plays a role in the association between state-anxiety and cannabis. METHODS Three-hundred-sixteen participants ranging in age from 18 to 71 ...