#psychosis

#psychosis

In early February, Canadian researchers reported that rates of severe mental illness among young people have risen alongside increased access to high-potency cannabis (Callaghan, et al., 2022). Around the same time, a new book, A Killing in Cannabis (Kohn, 2024), revisited a 2019 California murder and highlighted how violence tied to the marijuana trade has persisted even after legalization. On February 9, 2024, an opinion piece from the New York Times editorial board

This is a tough time for politics in America. But it's an extremely interesting time for those of us who wrestle with the nature of reality. As a psychiatrist who has treated people with psychosis for over 20 years, I have lived in the uncomfortable space between their experience of reality and mine and I have worked to change beliefs that are some of the most resistant to change: delusions.

Last August, Adam Thomas found himself wandering the dunes of Christmas Valley, Oregon, after a chatbot kept suggesting he mystically "follow the pattern" of his own consciousness. Thomas was running on very little sleep-he'd been talking to his chatbot around the clock for months by that point, asking it to help improve his life. Instead it sent him on empty assignments, like meandering the vacuous desert sprawl.

A victim impact statement from (the victim's) mother described how when the incident unfolded in front of her she believed with absolute certainty that she was watching her daughter being killed in front of her, and how she relives that moment over and over. The mother told of a profound emotional and psychological harm which has resulted in her constantly scanning for danger, the judge went on.

For most people, the word psychosis evokes images of permanent decline. A person with lived experience is imagined as someone whose future has been irreversibly damaged, whose mind can never be trusted again, and whose life will shrink to something small, unsteady, and disconnected. We are taught to believe that a psychotic episode destroys a person's capacity to think clearly, work meaningfully, contribute to society, love deeply, or live fully.

However, it didn't explain how previous prohibitionbased policies designed to reduce cannabis use have driven up the strength of street cannabis, the source of most cannabis for people with psychosis, thus making the problem worse.

On 14 October 2025, the CEO of OpenAI made an extraordinary announcement. We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive, it says, to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. As a psychiatrist who studies emerging psychosis in adolescents and young adults, this was news to me. Researchers have identified 16 cases in the media this year of individuals developing symptoms of psychosis losing touch with reality in the context of ChatGPT use.

Not only can things get better, but they've also been better. Many smart, good people have looked at their time's ways of dealing with mental distress and found a superior way. Psychiatry isn't a linear field of medicine. Rather, it's been marked by periods of reform and humanity, alternating with periods of reductive thinking and scant resources. It's essential to understand this cyclic movement. Right now I'd say we're somewhere between the two.

Accounts of people developing psychosis - which renders them unable to distinguish between what is and is not reality - after interacting with generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have increased in the past few months. At least 17 people have been reported to have developed psychosis, according to a preprint posted online last month. After engaging with chatbots such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, some of these people experienced spiritual awakenings or uncovered what they thought were conspiracies.

Cannabidiol (CBD) acts very differently from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC); it's non-psychoactive and not intoxicating, and it does not induce abuse or dependence. It's highly fat-soluble; thus, it enters the brain easily. However, it has low solubility and absorption in water, which produces variable pharmacokinetics and contributes to the difficulty in studying its multiple mechanisms of action. Bioavailability via inhalation averages about 31 percent, while oral bioavailability is only about 6 percent in humans. Therefore, don't bother eating it.

He said this to try and make me feel like schizophrenia is nothing that is really that different from what others experience, so I shouldn't feel weird, abnormal, or ashamed. I truly appreciate the intention behind what he is saying; however, it really has me thinking of this analogy, whether it has merit, and what the true differences are between a nightmare and a psychotic break.

For decades, a woman named Mary suffered from consuming delusions. Long-lost professional colleagues were meddling with her life; someone was spying on her through a camera in the showerhead; her eldest daughter was conspiring against her and putting poison on her pizza.

The prosecution argued that psychosis brought on by self-induced intoxication was no defence for murder, despite Monzo's claims of mental incapacity.