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People with Psychosis Who Use Marijuana Have 2-1/2 Times Lower Death Rate

May 31, 2012 by admin in Psychiatry with 2 Comments

The more significant point of the study, which it never discusses, is that it demonstrates that psychiatric drugs are killing people at a rate as much as 13½ times the rest of the population!

Marijuana has often been demonized as causing schizophrenia, though a cause-and-effect connection has never been shown. Now, though, a new study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research has documented that people diagnosed with schizophrenia who use marijuana—also called pot or cannabis—live longer than those who don’t, and alcohol use has no impact on lifespan. The authors concluded:

To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to examine the risk of mortality with cannabis and alcohol in people with PD (psychotic disorders). This interesting finding of decreased mortality risk … in cannabis users is a novel finding and one that will need replication in larger epidemiological studies.

The study, titled “Alcohol and cannabis use and mortality in people with schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders” and published 15 May 2012, followed 762 people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders for 10 years. The death rate after 5 years was 7.5% in non-pot users and 3.1% in those who used pot. After 10 years, the death rate in non-pot users was 13.6%, and 5.5% in pot users.

That is, pot abstainers died at nearly 2½ times the rate of pot users.

Proof that Psychiatric Drugs Are Killers

HIdden in these figures is the effect of psychoactive pharmaceutical drugs on lifespan, and it’s quite disturbing:

I referred to the CDC’s National Vital Statistics Reports, Death: Final Data for 2007, to estimate the death rates. The reference is the graph at the top of page 7. To assure that the estimate would be the highest possible, I referred to males because female death rates are lower in the age range of 35-54. Also, the figures chosen to calculate death rates were the next-higher tick marks above the highest point on the graphed line. This assures that a higher rate of death than actually occurs was utilized, so that the most conservative estimate of difference in death rates between persons diagnosed with psychosis and the general populace could be made:

The death rate among the general populace aged 35-44 is about 0.4%.
The death rate among the general populace aged 45-54 is about 1.0%.
The marijuana study noted that most deaths involving psychosis occurred in the 35-55 age range.
Assuming the higher of the two figures, 1.0%, it’s clear that psychiatric drugs are killing 35-55 year olds as much as 13½ times the natural rate of death.

This can be assumed as true because the lifespans of people with psychiatric diagnoses was identical to that of everyone else until the advent of psychiatric drugging. Further, the standard response of doctors and psychiatrists is to push antipsychotics as the primary treatment. So, let’s say it again:

Psychiatric drugs are killing people at 13½ times the normal rate of death in adults aged 35-54!

Of course, the authors didn’t bother to explore this disturbing result, and they tried to come up with excuses for their unexpected finding about marijuana, with speculation that “cannabis users may (be) higher functioning”. That is, of course, based on nothing but wishful thinking.

Whether marijuana lengthens the lives of people who are not taking psychoactive drugs is not shown by this study. It does, though, appear to document that pot provides a protective effect against the adverse effects of those drugs.