- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
The largest review of medicinal cannabis to date found it doesn’t effectively treat anxiety, depression, or PTSD—despite millions using it for those reasons. Researchers warn it could even make mental health worse, raising risks like psychosis and addiction while delaying proven treatments. Some limited benefits were seen for conditions like insomnia and autism, but the evidence is weak. The findings are fueling calls for stricter oversight as cannabis use continues to rise.
Study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(26)00015-5/fulltext
Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260319044656.htm
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
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i don’t recall that weed was ever used for those things, other then just as a copeing mechanism, i think the argument is that it was better then the other narcotics by a country mile.
unless you are talking about charletons, but like we got people saying magic rocks cure cancer so like why would we need to validate their nonsense?
It’s not a “cure” medicine, it’s a “relief” medicine.
Like painkillers.
They don’t heal, they help lessen the negative effect of the illness to help while healing.We already know this, stop twisting study results to sound like there’s no positive side of cannabis.
Yes, that’s exactly what the study says. That’s there’s nothing indicating this “relief” (= lessen symptoms) is given by cannabis. They’re not even talking about a cure, so not sure why you’re even bringing this up.
Because no matter what this study concludes, far too many people know for absolutely certain that conclusion isn’t true, based on the simple fact that their personal experience contradicts it.
There aren’t any drugs that resolve anxiety, depression, or ptsd on your behalf with nothing else. The most any drug can do is reduce feeling these things while they’re active so that the causes of the feelings may be addressed with lifestyle and cognitive changes.
Drugs are a temporary shelter from the raging storm of these issues while you re-build or build up in the first place a real shelter to experience the world from in peace and comfort. The temporary shelter blows away when the drugs wear off, and to rely on a temporary shelter permanently is no solution. That being said, plenty of people without any shelter at all don’t survive. Drugs help, but they don’t fix the problems they provide temporary relief from, you must solve those problems.
Like the study said, there needs to be more specific research in a controlled environment of these substances being used in coordination with established therapies and procedures. I have personal anecdotal experience of positive outcomes with cannabis in a robust framework addressing these issues beyond chemical means. Importantly, I may not have survived without the option to put the overwhelming desire to opt out of this planet on hold for a few hours at a time by briefly regaining my ability to feel pleasure. My psych wanted to try ketamine for this purpose, but I’m a lot more comfortable with cannabis.
To be fair, the population of this meta analysis is severely underpowered to assess whether there is an effect for rare/semi-rare conditions. (population is couple of hundred in most areas) and it shows in the confidence intervals. Wouldn’t exactly call this a “huge” study.
A better title would be “Study unable to determine if cannabis helps or hurts anxiety, depression, or PTSD because of lack of data” which sounds less glamorous.
There were six studies included on anxiety with a total participant count of ~350… What a pathetic attempt of a review
Only 123 participants for PTSD and ONE study included
This search led to 634 results, of which 16 were relevant reviews where the mental disorder or SUD was the primary indication that cannabinoids were used to treat. Of these, few reviews included all mental disorders and SUDs (n=6), conducted a meta-analysis (n=4), or thoroughly evaluated the quality of evidence (n=2).
The data is shit. That’s not their fault and it’s mentioned on page 1 of the paper.
It is their fault when they literally draw the conclusion cannabis does nothing for these conditions when they don’t have the data required to make that conclusion
This is how meta analyses work:
you look at available research, aggregate over it, draw conclusions. It is not unusual that such meta studies even point out that more research is needed.In fact, it is often helpful to get this ‘more research’ funded.
The issue is this is bit a HUGE meta study. The results are being presented disingenuously.
Yeah, doesn’t get as many clicks as “medium-small” meta study does it.
Then it needs to say more research needed instead of making the misleading claim there’s no effect
There were no significant effects on outcomes associated with anxiety, anorexia nervosa, psychotic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and opioid use disorder. There were insufficient data to meta-analyse studies of ADHD, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and tobacco use disorder.
No significant effect does not mean no effect, very crucial difference. It means that the effect wasn’t statistically significant, i.e. <5% chance of being random.
when they literally draw the conclusion cannabis does nothing for these conditions
No, they don’t do that.
They say that based on the available data, cannabis is not shown to be effective as an only form of treatment, and recommend more studies be done because the vast majority of the studies that exist are very poor.
The reporting on the paper is not the paper.
There were no significant effects on outcomes associated with anxiety, anorexia nervosa, psychotic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and opioid use disorder. There were insufficient data to meta-analyse studies of ADHD, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and tobacco use disorder.
They claim no significant effects for anxiety and PTSD when they could have said there was insufficient data. It’s misleading. They DO do that.
No significant effect means no statistically significant effect here. The authors never claim an effect doesn’t exist.
It doesn’t fix anything, you just don’t care as much.
Right, this does depend on the criteria for successful treatment.
No one questions that pain killers are an effective treatment for pain, though they do nothing to cure the cause of the pain.
Depends on the painkiller, tbf, I think there’s a Cochrane review that finds no evidence to support that paracetamol/acetaminophen is an effective medication for most types of pain, if I remember correctly.
What I’ve seen is that Tylenol is moderately good for fever and headaches, but not for injuries, joints, cuts and abrasions, etc. For those you want an anti-inflammatory, like naproxen or Ibuprofen.
Thank you. I still have some MDs who rely on that outdated study and try to convince me that I should chew willow bark
That’s just aspirin with extra steps
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“Huge study reveals ibuprofen doesn’t eliminate pain, just the sensation of it”
Oh okay, I guess I should stop using it then?
“Well, maybe… We need to do another Huge Study to confirm”
This time, with dabs.
Weed helped me not kill myself while going through a mental breakdown with the most severe traumatic flashbacks and dissociative episodes I have ever experienced in my life. I wipe my ass with this study.
It’s not the study that’s the problem here, the study clearly examined it “as the primary treatment”. This is a common science media failure, they’ve conflated “primary treatment” with “helps”, and that is not the same thing at all.
Crutches aren’t the “primary treatment” for a broken leg either, but they do assist recovery by allowing someone to not use the broken leg. I’d suggest cannabis plays a similar role, it gives people the distance from the pain and further injury that they need for actual recovery, which sounds like it could describe your experience.
Cannabis is sychoactive and allows for deeper introspection to anyone attempting to reconcile their mental health.
It may not be a panacea, but it is very much a great tool in the arsenal of mental health.
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But it’s not the study that said that weed doesn’t help. It says there’s no evidence that using it on its own will help, which is exactly what you’ve described. The awkwardly positioned dick sucking you demand should be from sciencedaily.com
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I hear you and I know the feeling very well. I just hate that really bad media reporting is causing people to lose trust in decent science.
I hope that if you find a moment of space and energy, you can consider adjusting the target of your anger. If not, I totally get it - I’ll continue railing against the wilful misrepresentation of people’s hard work elsewhere, and I wish you the best of luck.
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In my experience researchers are being very clear, but the context of this is super important.
When researchers publish in journals, their target audience is other people in their field. In this case other researchers and doctors. With that in mind, they choose words and phrases very specific to their field that have agreed-on definitions inside that field. Their obligation (amongst others) is to communicate to their field about their findings, as accurately as possible. They obviously have to publish their research so that science can move forward too.
But then when they publish it, people outside the field can also read it, and this is where the problem starts creeping in.
There are no qualifications required to be a “science reporter”. Unlike the researchers, those reporters aren’t required to have experience in the niche they’re writing about. They’re not required to have any knowledge of the wider field or subspecialty. They don’t necessarily know which of the words are specific and which are common use words. They don’t have to declare their conflicts of interest. They aren’t required to quote the researchers in full. If you’re lucky, they might have a science-related undergrad degree, but that’s only a taste of what is needed.
And researchers almost always say a hell of a lot, knowing that they’re trying to translate their everyday jargon to someone who doesn’t know it.
So in better examples of this problem, nuance gets lost. In worse examples, words are substituted that fundamentally change the meaning of the work. You can see this happen in the abstract here, emphasis mine:
“We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) testing the efficacy and safety of cannabinoids as the primary treatment for mental disorders or SUDs.”
In common speech, “primary treatment” sounds like it could just mean “biggest help”, but in medicine it holds a lot more meaning. “Primary treatment” in medicine means the absolute first thing you do that has the least destructive side effects and cures the patient, or if there is no cure, it is the thing that has the best quality evidence to help the patient as much as possible with the least destructive side effects. It’s the silver bullet you reach for before all other things, or as close as you can get to it.
And so sciencedaily, not appreciating (or actively disregarding) that there was significant meaning in those two words, chose the word “helps” for the title. The title differs from the body, which comes closer with “does not treat”, but that’s still not the same thing. The difference between title and body is part of why I lean towards classing this as wilful misrepresentation. The other part is where they’re pushing discussion about regulation, which has no relation to the contents of the paper.
The abstract could have been better, I did have to read some of the methodology to confirm what I suspected, but as far as I can tell, they did use the correct terminology for their target audience. And you’re not supposed to only read the abstract anyway.
Ultimately the responsibility for the accuracy of reporting about a research paper outside of a scientific journal comes down to the reporter and their employer. The researcher can only do so much to explain their work to that reporter, they can’t be responsible for teaching that reporter their entire field of knowledge, or knowing which parts the reporter is ignorant of. They probably also aren’t given the opportunity to suggest edits for the article before release and they probably don’t know to ask for the opportunity because they don’t work in the media.
Tl;dr sciencedaily needs to do better
It’s a poor analogy. Using crutches on their own will hugely benefit some fraction of broken legs, compared to no treatment. Not as much as a cast, but it will show results.
That doesn’t really work for medication. Painkillers and anti-nausea medication are poor treatments for almost any problem, but they contribute to the treatment of thousands of conditions.
Your point is entirely true though, just not a great analogy…
Same, if it wasn’t for weed I probably would have punched my own ticket years ago. I’ve been off it for a few months studying for a drug test and yaboi needs a bong rip.
Well this study doesn’t mention psychic pain or spiritual warfare so it’s clearly hogwash.
well, that’s just like, their opinion, man.
And didn’t pass peer review
Here we go with them trying to keep the lies going & sadly a lot will fall for this again but that’s why they legalized it so they could lace it for more future problems
I mean this is obviously anecdotal, but it helped me tremendously through some of the worst trauma I have ever encountered. I don’t really give a shit what any study says.
Was cannabis ever a serious contender for these issues? I always considered a painkiller and against loss of appetite, but nothing psychological.
delaying proven treatments
Good luck getting treatment for depression here in a timely fashion, I think with the latest changes, people need to wait about a year for an appointment. Situation is bleak, can’t blame anyone getting a bit of relief
It helps for gastro stuff (I haven’t paid too much attention to which, just I’m the patient they use to point to as “look! Use it for gastro” and cannabis treats all my gastro diseases). Its about time for my five year check in with the lady who does the cannabis CPE so we’ll have plenty to talk about if you want me to ask, just give me like six months to both visit and gather research.
I think the point is that if it is the treatment given to you by your doctor without it being a stopgap, then that is delaying proven treatments. If you use it as a stopgap then that’s beside the point
Was cannabis ever a serious contender for these issues?
Honestly, that doesn’t really matter. You can test unlikely contenders too, especially in a desk study that doesn’t have any ethics problems.
What I meant to ask was if anyone is surprised by the results of the study, not if it should have been conducted in the first place.
I don’t think weed helps my anxiety, but it does help with the side effects of the anti-anxiety medication.
It helped my anxiety. But I don’t need it anymore, anyway.
smoke a weed, feel euphoria for 10 minutes, then crippling anxiety for 4 hours
worst drug ever thanks
Strange because it’s the exact opposite for me, I’ll get a huge peak of death-fearing anxiety with a quick onset, especially if I do a bit too much, but then it mellows out within 20/30min.
As soon as I started an effective dose of Prozac my high anxiety went away, in both senses of ‘high’ (weed high and a lot of anxiety).
Fascists have been robbing people at gunpoint in their own homes with approval from a serial killing billionaire monopolist state and that article talks about pseudoscience, non-verifiable, self-report based terms like feelings of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Facts have shown that POVERTY causes anxiety, depression, and PTSD. POLICE STATE ARMED ROBBERIES CAUSE ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, AND PTSD. They’re more likely to happen to people on the antagonist side of the MERCK, PFIZER, GSK MONOPOLY DRUG CARTEL. That is a fact about cannabis possession, cultivation, usage, and sale. Another relevant fact about this study would be the shadow network of BIG PHARMA serial killers with residence addresses somewhere near readers of that article and bank accounts in 0-tax jurisdictions of the likes of Panama, Luxembourg, etc. that funded putting that pile of feces into a format that looks like a scientific article. In the meantime, those unethical bastards have been selling drugs of the likes of opioids, benzodiazepines, etc. from inside hospitals near the readers of that article, drugs that have killed tens of thousands if not millions of humans per year.
P.S. That article totally omits to even acknowledge the variety of types of cannabis with widely different molecular composition profiles.
P.P.S. That article also omits to acknowledge that fact that research on cannabis consumption therapy has been happening outside the fascist states of the american-european colonial (and racist) empire and their ‘universities’ (sites of propaganda) because of a little thing called a decades-long illegal criminalization of the non-violent behavior of personal choice of consumption of a plant flower with numerous therapy applications growable with a small budget in approximately any house.
Dude, pass the joint, you’re bogarting it
