Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T02:37:36.712Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Anxiety, psychopathology and the qualitative experience of long-term use of cannabis

from PART 2 - RESEARCH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2009

Nadia Solowij
Affiliation:
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales
Get access

Summary

The cannabis users and ex-users studied in each experiment reported here completed a number of questionnaires. These assessed levels of anxiety, symptoms of psychopathology and dependence on cannabis and provided an opportunity for the self report of any problems associated with longterm cannabis use. A qualitative description of the experience of longterm cannabis use was obtained through structured and open-ended questionnaires.

The inclusion of these assessments was important for two reasons: (1) to exclude the possibility that the event-related potential (ERP) findings might reflect some psychological differences between users and nonusers rather than being the result of cannabis use, with anxiety and psychopathology judged to be the most likely candidates, and (2) to examine the consistency between self reported symptoms of dependence, subjective effects and cognitive failure and the results obtained from assessment of cognitive functioning by means of ERP measures of selective attention.

This chapter will present descriptive summaries of the results of all questionnaires administered, provide results of quantitative analyses where appropriate and discuss the qualitative experience of long-term cannabis use. The results from each sample from each experiment will be discussed separately but also combined across studies where appropriate. Correlations between test measures and the ERP results of each study will be presented where appropriate. The ERP measures used in correlational analysis were PN to pitch irrelevant tones measured over 300 to 600 ms at frontal and central sites, which reflects the unnecessary processing of complex irrelevant information, and P300 latency measured at the contralateral parietal scalp site, as a measure of stimulus evaluation time, or the speed of information processing. Wherever possible, the results were considered in terms of frequency and duration of cannabis use.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×