Medical Reasons for Marijuana Use, Forms of Use, and Patient Perception of Physician Attitudes Among the US Population

Comparing older nonmedical and medical cannabis users: health-related characteristics, cannabis use patterns, and cannabis sources

“…Research on adult cannabis users suggests that compared to nonmedical users, medical users tend to have higher rates of physical (including pain) and mental health problems, cannabis use disorder, and other substance use problems (except alcohol use disorder) and use cannabis more frequently (e.g., every day/nearly every day) (5,8,9). According to a nationally representative sample study of adult medical cannabis users, the most common medical reasons for cannabis use, without substantial variation by race, were anxiety (49%), insomnia (47%), chronic pain (42%), depression (39%), mood (32%), and arthritis (23%) (10). The same study also found that 21% of medical users did not have a doctor; and among those with doctors, 33% did not inform them; 28% reported their doctor was neutral on their use, 32% reported their doctor was supportive, and 8% reported their doctor was not supportive.…”

Human Laboratory Models of Cannabis Use: Applications for Clinical and Translational Psychiatry Research

“…Below, we review these human laboratory procedures and describe their potential applications to explore cannabis effects in patients with psychiatric illnesses. Because anxiety disorders are among the most common psychiatric illnesses affecting American adults ( 39 ), and anxiety relief is also the most commonly-reported reason for medicinal cannabis use ( 5 ), we focus particularly on how human laboratory procedures could be applied to study cannabis effects in individuals with anxiety and related disorders. These procedures and associated applications are summarized in Table 1 .…”

“…According to the affect-motivational model , negative reinforcement drives cannabis use by some individuals with affective psychopathology (e.g., depression/anxiety disorders), who may use cannabis situationally to attenuate affective symptoms ( 82 ). Supporting this idea, both depressive and anxiety disorders are linked to higher-than-average rates of cannabis use ( 82 ), and alleviating depression/anxiety symptoms is among the most commonly-cited reasons for which individuals seek medicinal cannabis treatment ( 5 , 84 ). Moreover, preliminary neuroimaging data in both cannabis users ( 85 ) and non-cannabis using healthy volunteers ( 86 , 87 ) suggest that THC acutely reduces functional activity in brain regions involved in emotional processing, particularly when evaluating negative face emotions.…”

“…Americans increasingly use cannabis medicinally (i.e., with the intent to treat one or more symptoms) ( 5 ). Psychiatric symptoms including anxiety, depression, and stress are among the most common reasons for which patients report seeking medicinal cannabis ( 6 , 7 ).…”

“…Psychiatric symptoms including anxiety, depression, and stress are among the most common reasons for which patients report seeking medicinal cannabis ( 6 , 7 ). Of 9,003 American adults who responded to a randomized, nationally-representative survey, 7% endorsed medicinal cannabis use, among whom 47 and 39%, respectively used cannabis to treat anxiety and depression ( 5 ). Among 2,774 American cannabis users in another survey, 13.6 and 12.7% reported using cannabis as a substitute for anxiolytics and antidepressant medication, respectively ( 8 ).…”