This paper investigates whether cannabis use leads to worse mental health. To do so, we account for common unobserved factors affecting mental health and cannabis consumptionfby modeling mental health jointly with the dynamics of cannabis use. Our main finding is that using cannabis increases the likelihood of mental health problems, with current use having a larger effect than past use. The estimates suggest a dose response relationship between the frequency of recent cannabis use and the probability of currently experiencing a mental health problem.Our main finding is that frequent use of cannabis increases the likelihood of mental health problems. Infrequent and past cannabis use also increases the likelihood of mental health problems but the effects are substantially smaller. To give a sense of the magnitude of the effects, our estimates suggest that 2.4% of males who use cannabis weekly or more often will experience severe mental health problems compared with 1.5% of males who use monthly, 1.4% of males who are past users and 0.9% of males who have never used cannabis.
Source: CANNABIS USE AND MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS
Tilburg University, The Netherlands July 2009
Source: CANNABIS USE AND MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS
Tilburg University, The Netherlands July 2009