Cannabis Use among People with Mental Illness: Clinical and Socio-Demographic Characteristics

Abstract

Background: Cannabis can be associated with short-term and long-term adverse effects such as psychotic states, risk of dependence, provoking relapse and aggravating existing psychotic symptoms. Aim: The current study is a descriptive cross-sectional hospital based study that aims to identify the prevalence and correlates of cannabis use among patients with mental illness. Methods: The study was conducted in two outpatient psychiatry clinics in Khartoum (Sudan). The sample size was 348 consecutive patients over 2 months’ study period. Clinical and sociodemographic characteristics were documented. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the data variables, and tabulated tables were used to calculate chi-square test for categorical data and the significance was set at p < 0.05. Results: A total of 96 participants (27.6%) had history of cannabis abuse; all of them were male patients. The majority (51%) started to use cannabis between 10 - 19 years of age, and most of them (86.6%) had a duration of less than five years of using cannabis. Psychiatric symptoms occurred after starting cannabis use in 17.7% of cases. We found a statistically significant difference related to age when comparing the age of cannabis users and non-users (p = 0.0239). The majority of patients with comorbid mental illness and cannabis abuse (89.5%) were below the age of 40 years. There was also statistically significant association between educational level achieved and history of using cannabis (p = 0.00001). Those with history of cannabis are more likely to be manual laborers (46.9%), and those with no history of cannabis were mostly unemployed (44%), indicating significant influence of employment history (p = 0.0064). The relation between using cannabis and the clinical psychiatric diagnosis was not statically significant (p = 0.125). Conclusion: Cannabis use is highly prevalent among people with mental illness. It is related to age, educational level and type of work.