Cannabis use continues to increase as more states decriminalize marijuana. Also increasing is cannabis use by pregnant women. These women report that they use cannabis in order to manage their stress and help with the mood swings of pregnancy. Until recently, nobody studied if there was a correlation between prenatal cannabis use and mental health disorders.
From 2012 to 2017, researchers from Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC) studied pregnant women who self-reported prenatal cannabis use, which was confirmed by a urine test at eight weeks gestation.
More than 196,000 pregnancies were included in the study, and 11, 681 of those pregnant women self-reported and tested positive for prenatal cannabis use. The women who used cannabis prenatally tended to be younger than 25 years old, had lower incomes, and were of African American or Hispanic descent.
Prenatal cannabis users were also more likely than non-users to have either anxiety disorder and/or depressive disorder, depression (mild to severe), trauma, and self-reported partner violence. In short, pregnant women in California who suffered from depression and anxiety disorders, as well as trauma diagnoses were more likely to use prenatal cannabis than women without mental health issues.
More research is needed in order to determine if cannabis use is causing mental health issues or if the mental health issues are leading people to use cannabis to manage their symptoms. The results of the KPNC study are published in the Jama Network Open journal.