take this one, it gives you colours

[the_siobhan]

Is anybody aware of any studies looking at a correlation between depression and recreational drug use?

[EDIT] From the perspective of the drug use happening before the depression. I'm well aware of the other way around.

Comments

[raindrops.livejournal.com]

But which came first? Damn those chickens and their eggs.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

There's a reason I tried to avoid mentioning cause and effect, although you can easily find scientific literature that assumes a correlation between drug use and depression means the drug use caused the depression (often with an undertone of "They're getting their just punishment for using illegal and/or immoral substances". The French, for some reason, strike me as particularly likely to take this attitude to their research.)

I've been thinking about it, and I'm just not sure you could actually answer accurately "Does recreational drug use increase the chance of depression?"

Because the obvious experimental design is take a large population of children, do complete psych workups and family histories (because we know those things affect the chance of depression), split them into two equal groups, and then somehow ensure one group does drugs and the other doesn't, and then follow-up long term. Can't be done ethically (to put it mildly).

You might have some chance with case-control studies, again you'd need complete baseline psych workups and family histories, and (based on trusting self-reporting of drug use or not!) pair drug-using and non-drug-using individuals with otherwise closely-matched backgrounds and risk factors. It'd be an enormous job, and at this point, I don't think anyone even knows if you could do it.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

There's a reason I tried to avoid mentioning cause and effect, although you can easily find scientific literature that assumes a correlation between drug use and depression means the drug use caused the depression (often with an undertone of "They're getting their just punishment for using illegal and/or immoral substances".

T probably should have been more specific in my original question - I was wondering if there were any kind of studies that actually showed that the drug use potentially caused the depression.

I do find it very interesting that the clinical interpretaion is one of causation, while most people who responded to the question (some of whom I hazard may have done drugs or known people who do drugs) immediately identified self-medication,

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

T probably should have been more specific in my original question - I was wondering if there were any kind of studies that actually showed that the drug use potentially caused the depression.

I understand that, and that's where you got me thinking, in terms of how you would actually prove causation. I think plenty of studies have glibly assumed causation, but it's actually very hard to prove.

I understand why your friends identified self-medication - mental illness has a long history of being seen as evil, defective, sinful, basically bad and "other". When you are that "other", you have to think differently about it. And in this case, I think it's at least as likely to be correct.

(I've been diagnosed with mental illness myself, but don't do recreational drugs - I react badly to even moderate amounts of either caffeine or alcohol; aspirin makes me vomit, etc so I never had any urge to try self-medicating anything :-)