Abstract
Background: Approximately 0.5% of the population is diagnosed with some form of schizophrenia, under the prevailing view that the pathology is best treated using pharmaceutical medications that act on monoamine receptors. Methods: We briefly review evidence on the impact of environmental forces, particularly the effect of autoimmune activity, in the expression of schizophrenic profiles and the role of Cannabis therapy for regulating immunological functioning. Results: A review of the literature shows that phytocannabinoid consumption may be a safe and effective treatment option for schizophrenia as a primary or adjunctive therapy. Conclusions: Emerging research suggests that Cannabis can be used as a treatment for schizophrenia within a broader etiological perspective that focuses on environmental, autoimmune, and neuroinflammatory causes of the disorder, offering a fresh start and newfound hope for those suffering from this debilitating and poorly understood disease.
Highlights
0.5% of the population is diagnosed with some form of schizophrenia, under the prevailing view that the pathology is best treated using pharmaceutical medications that act on monoamine receptors
Antipsychotic medications frequently prescribed to treat schizophrenia are often designed around a monoamine neurotransmitter hypothesis, typically the dopamine hypothesis, which associates the disorder with a dysfunction in the dopaminergic pathways, contributing to positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms of the disease [10,11,12]
Perhaps more fundamental to the drawbacks of the antipsychotic medication model for treating schizophrenia is the misapplication of the concept of “reductionism,” or the belief that complex mental illnesses, often characterized by unique mental symptoms, including mental intentions can be reduced to biophysiological mechanisms, i.e., monoamine receptor sites, that function in basic or fundamental ways [33]
Summary
0.5% of the population is diagnosed with some form of schizophrenia, under the prevailing view that the pathology is best treated using pharmaceutical medications that act on monoamine receptors. Antipsychotic medications frequently prescribed to treat schizophrenia are often designed around a monoamine neurotransmitter hypothesis, typically the dopamine hypothesis, which associates the disorder with a dysfunction in the dopaminergic pathways, contributing to positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms of the disease [10,11,12].
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