Damage to the brain caused by cannabis is reversible in the medium term, according to a new study carried out at the Centre for Biomedical Network Research for Mental Health (CIBERSAM) in the Santiago Hospital in Vitoria. This work, carried out in cooperation with the Basque Foundation for Healthcare Innovation and Research (BIOEF), was published in November 2009 in the scientific journal Schizophrenia Bulletin, the world’s leading publication on schizophrenia.

The research team, led by Dr. Ana González-Pinto, spent eight years studying the consequences of cannabis consumption on the brains of young people with psychotic disorders. The research reveals that young people who manage to give up this drug after a first psychotic episode “recover in the medium term, although not in the short term”, while if they continue to smoke cannabis “they have an extremely bad prognosis”.

The importance of these results lies in the fact that previous research into this matter has always been very pessimistic, showing that cannabis produced irreversible brain damage.

However, the research carried out by the hospital in Alava supports the “theory of brain damage”, but emphasises that “it is possible to recover in the medium term, over a period of between five and eight years”. Nevertheless, they are adamant that “the continued consumption of cannabis is even worse for the mental health of psychotic patients than was previously thought”.

The research sample was made up of a group of patients with psychotic first episodes admitted to the Santiago Hospital in Vitoria, the only centre for this type of treatment in an area of 300,000 inhabitants.