Common triggers of psychosis… some medications or drugs, especially marijuana, psychedelics, MDMA
Re: psychedelics & psychosis risk, see Krebs & Johansen 2013, a study of National Survey on Drug Use and Health data (n = 130,152) which found:
21,967 respondents (13.4% weighted) reported lifetime psychedelic use. There were no significant associations between lifetime use of any psychedelics, lifetime use of specific psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, peyote), or past year use of LSD and increased rate of any of the mental health outcomes.
Rather, in several cases psychedelic use was associated with lower rate of mental health problems.
Common triggers of psychosis? … Some medications or drugs, especially marijuana or MDMA
What’s the evidence for MDMA being especially likely to trigger psychosis?
From a quick look, I found a couple case reports (1, 2) where ecstasy appears to have caused a psychotic episode. But I couldn’t find a population-level study on this (probably there isn’t one).
Given that millions of people use MDMA each year and there’s only a couple case reports of ecstasy-induced psychosis in the literature, MDMA doesn’t seem especially likely to cause psychosis.
So, in the case where there’s no causal relationship, we’d expect to see about 22,320 people in the US who both used MDMA in the last year and are schizophrenic (3,100,000 MDMA users * 0.72%)
Given that there doesn’t seem to be a population-level study on this and the prevalence can explained without positing a causal relationship (definitely could find 32 folks at treatment centers out of 22,000), I think assuming causality here is a stretch.
Right, I linked to that wikipedia article because it gives a long list of drugs that may induce psychosis (including MDMA), and the citation it gives for MDMA causing psychosis is a single case report from 1991.
Re: psychedelics & psychosis risk, see Krebs & Johansen 2013, a study of National Survey on Drug Use and Health data (n = 130,152) which found:
More detail on this comment thread.
I’ve looked at this study and others and I agree. I’ve updated that sentence.
Thanks, Julia.
What’s the evidence for MDMA being especially likely to trigger psychosis?
From a quick look, I found a couple case reports (1, 2) where ecstasy appears to have caused a psychotic episode. But I couldn’t find a population-level study on this (probably there isn’t one).
Given that millions of people use MDMA each year and there’s only a couple case reports of ecstasy-induced psychosis in the literature, MDMA doesn’t seem especially likely to cause psychosis.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance-induced_psychosis
I’m confused—the wikipedia article you link to lists MDMA as one of the substances that induces psychosis. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis#Substituted_amphetamines
https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/59383
The fact that this study had 32 participants from 2 drug treatment centers indicates to me that it’s not just a few cases.
Thanks, I didn’t find that study during my quick look.
I think this is a base-rates thing:
In the US, overall prevalence of schizophrenia is something like 7.2 people out of 1,000
In the US, around 3.1 million people use MDMA each year (In 2013, 1% tried in the last year * 2013 population of 316 million)
So, in the case where there’s no causal relationship, we’d expect to see about 22,320 people in the US who both used MDMA in the last year and are schizophrenic (3,100,000 MDMA users * 0.72%)
Given that there doesn’t seem to be a population-level study on this and the prevalence can explained without positing a causal relationship (definitely could find 32 folks at treatment centers out of 22,000), I think assuming causality here is a stretch.
Right, I linked to that wikipedia article because it gives a long list of drugs that may induce psychosis (including MDMA), and the citation it gives for MDMA causing psychosis is a single case report from 1991.