According to a study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, researchers from McGill and Oxford Universities analyzed 11 studies that covered nearly 24,000 teens and discovered a link between marijuana use in teens and depression later on.

The researchers had discovered that using marijuana at least weekly before 18 is associated with a 37 percent increased risk of depression in adulthood even when taking into account someone’s existing mental health issues. This is evident up to the age of 32

According to the researchers, roughly 400,000 cases of depression in the United States could be linked to marijuana use by teenagers.

The results, based on 11 studies, also found that the teens using marijuana had three times more of a chance of attempting suicide.

“The results have to be interpreted with caution because it’s based on a very small number of published studies, but the signal is quite strong,” says Guohua Li, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Li was not involved with the study.

“The implications for the study of public policy and mental health are profound,” he adds, because marijuana is so common, with about 20 percent of high school seniors in the US using the drug at least once a month.

“It’s going to take much more research and learning years to understand the full picture of the impact of marijuana legalization and population health,” says Li. “I think protecting children and adolescents and monitoring these small effects is very important.”


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