MARIJUANA USE LINKED TO MENTAL PROBLEMS

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The White House says that the younger children are when
they first smoke marijuana, the more likely they are to suffer serious
mental health problems like depression.

"A growing body of evidence now demonstrates that smoking marijuana can
increase the risk of serious mental health problems," said John Walters,
director of national drug control policy for the White House.

"New research being conducted here and abroad illustrates that marijuana
use, particularly during the teen years, can lead to depression, thoughts
of suicide and schizophrenia."

The government, labeling marijuana the most widely used illicit drug among
youth, is issuing a new public health warning to teenagers and parents
highlighting what it claims is the correlation between smoking marijuana
and mental illness.

The campaign will kick off next week with the publication of a letter in
the nation's largest newspapers warning of the mental health risks
associated with marijuana use.

Research shows that depression and other mental illnesses are both a cause
and a consequence of smoking marijuana, said Richard T. Suchinsky, of the
American Psychiatric Association Council on Addiction Psychiatry.

Twenty-one percent of adults who used marijuana before their 12th birthday
developed a serious mental illness in the past year, according to a new
government report Walters cited. The incidence of mental illness declined
as people delayed experimenting with the drug. Those who smoked marijuana
before 12 were twice as likely to have a serious mental illness as those
who waited until after they turned 18.

"Don't wait until your child gets a driver's license to talk about this; it
is too late," Walters said.

In Alabama, 36.1 percent of high school students said they had tried the
drug, and 8.5 percent said they had used it before their teens, according
to a 2003 survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4
percentage points.

That's below the national average -- 40.2 percent of high school students
admitted to trying marijuana and 9.9 percent said they did so before age 13.

Professionals who treat mental health and drug addiction problems in
adolescents have long seen the connection between the two.

"Basically, you can't treat one without the other," said Erin Hinz,
adolescent program coordinator at Bradford Health Services treatment center
in Tuscaloosa. Hinz added that Bradford has tried to educate parents and
children about the long-term effects of marijuana abuse, including its
impact on mental and emotional stability.

"You see depression a lot of time when they quit using drugs because they
say, 'I dug myself in this hole and look what I've done to my life,' " Hinz
said.

On the other hand, she said, Bradford also treats children who begin using
drugs to numb themselves to an underlying depression or social anxiety.

As research continues to support the link between drugs and mental health,
the trend is to treat them simultaneously, said Tim Naugher, executive
director of The Bridge Inc., a treatment center based in Gadsden.

"The majority of the kids we see have a primary diagnosis of substance
abuse," Naugher said. "What we've started doing is looking a little more
closely at the psychological evaluations when they come in to begin to
identify more of the mental health issues."

To facilitate the simultaneous treatment, The Bridge expanded one of its
substance abuse treatment programs in April to include mental health,
through a grant from the Alabama Department of Mental Health and Mental
Retardation.

This is the beginning of a trend to develop more programs that address both
substance abuse and mental illness, Naugher said.

But there are obstacles. Specifically, Alabama certifies facilities to
treat substance abuse, mental illness or retardation, and many centers are
only certified in one area. To encourage more dual treatment programs,
Naugher said, the certification process will have to be revised.

"The most important thing is to treat a patient when they come in and not
try and pigeon-hole them into one category when they come in," Naugher said.