United States – The association between overuse of marijuana and the onset of psychotic behavior develops incessantly, and researchers have found that the administration of antipsychotics may be the only way to prevent such patients from being admitted to a hospital.
Link Between Marijuana Overuse and Psychotic Behavior
During such psychosis, episodes are a very risky psychiatric state where the person loses the connection with reality. This power may get so uncontrollable sometimes that they may end up being hospitalized for treatment, as reported by HealthDay.
Nevertheless, a new study demonstrates that the instant injection of a class of antipsychotic drugs may aid those who abuse cannabis and later suffer from their first psychotic episode.
Antipsychotics: A Preventative Measure
“These findings encourage the early use of second-generation, long-acting injectables as an important secondary prevention strategy to reduce hospitalization rates,” the team headed by Dr. Alexander Denissoff of the University of Turku in Finland concludes.
Promising Findings
His team traced 1,820 people who experienced the first episode of psychosis to have also had the cannabis abuse disorder during the 2006 and 2021 period.
The count shows that only around 1,100 of all those patients suffered a “psychotic relapse” through hospitalization, as per the American Psychiatric Association bulletin. By contrast, individuals in the treatment group getting any antipsychotic medication were nearly one-third less apt for relapse-associated hospitalization compared to those not taking these drugs.
Effectiveness of Different Medications
Researchers found that risperidone blocked the odds of a relapse ending in hospitalization by 60% more than aripiprazole, which blocked by 58%, and oral clozapine and paliperidone, which blocked by 57% and 54%, respectively.
An important point emphasized by the researchers was the fact that if an individual with cannabis use disorder experiences multiple psychotic episodes and doesn’t use antipsychotic medications, the chance that they will experience psychosis doesn’t decrease, as reported by HealthDay.
People who might need to be hospitalized for any form of substance use were found to respond best to clozapine, and the rate of re-hospitalization due to any substance use was lowered by 86% when compared to risperidone at 67% and paliperidone at 63%.