Medscape (4/11, Keller) reports, “Cannabis use not only increases the risk for schizophrenia but new research suggests it is associated with more severe schizophrenic psychosis,” according to research presented at EPA 2013: 21st European Congress of Psychiatry. After performing “a longitudinal study of 50,087 male Swedish army conscripts aged 18 to 19 years between 1969 and 1970,” researchers found that “schizophrenia patients with a history of cannabis use had longer hospital stays, a higher rate of hospital readmission, and a type of schizophrenia ‘that may be more severe than schizophrenia cases in general,’ according to study investigator Peter Allebeck, MD, PhD, professor of social medicine in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.”
