alt Hacker News"But by excluding teens who were already showing mental health symptoms, the new study points to a potential causal link between cannabis use and later mental health diagnoses. Additional research is needed to understand the link fully."
Hm, but this does not exclude the possibility that the being prone to mental illness comes with a little bit higher tendency to consume cannabis...
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Let's not forget that many mental health "disorders" are just elaborate labels for having difficulty conforming to arbitrary cultural expectations.
When I read this article the other day I had the exact same thought. Is this simply correlation, or is it causation? Is teenage usage an indicator of a possible underlying condition that hasn’t fully manifest? Is it an early form of self medication?
Similarly, cigarettes also have a very strong correlation with schizophrenia. Completely non-causal, but it's hard to find a non-hospitalized schizophrenic who does not smoke.