Schizophrenia patients who used cannabis during adolescence had an earlier age at onset, more hospital admissions, and more total hospital days than those without cannabis history. The type of onset and clinical symptom profiles did not differ significantly between groups. The findings suggest that adolescent cannabis use is associated with a greater disease burden in schizophrenia.
A single dose of psilocybin, but not MDMA, produced short-term psychological changes in healthy adults: reduced neuroticism, increased extraversion, and improvements in mindfulness and connectedness one week after dosing. Psilocybin also induced stronger mystical experiences than MDMA, and the magnitude of those experiences correlated with changes in connectedness and mindfulness, though not with personality changes. Participants preferred larger group settings for MDMA than for psilocybin. The findings suggest that psilocybin's psychological effects may be mediated by mystical-type experiences.
People who experience psychotic experiences (PEs) between ages 12 and 24 are more likely to hold religious beliefs and identify as religious at age 28. Specifically, those with PEs were 7.8 percentage points less likely to answer 'no' to believing in God and 5.7 percentage points more likely to answer 'yes'. Religious belief at age 28 was also associated with a 5.7 percentage point increase in self-reported PEs at age 32. The findings suggest a potential bidirectional causal relationship between PEs and religiosity, particularly regarding religious beliefs, though effects for religious identity and service attendance were weaker or plausibly null.