Hi Rene,
I'm so sorry to hear about this it must be upsetting to you. Numerous articles on the Internet claim that smoking pot causes psychosis and can bring on schizophrenia.
Unfortunately, people with schizophrenia self-medicate with weed. The problem is that about an hour after getting high they get psychotic.
People who have bipolar often also have a substance abuse problem. Unfortunately, for a lot of people with bipolar and schizophrenia the drug of choice is cocaine.
Either way, whether it's weed or cocaine the outcome is not good for someone diagnosed with SZ or BP who abuses street drugs.
After I'm done commenting on your SharePost I will try to recover from my archives the SharePost I wrote about SZ and cannabis use. The High Times crowd might dispute the notion that smoking weed causes schizophrenia, yet the correlation between the two is so strong that quibbling over its veracity does no good.
At least 20 articles on the Internet in the last six months linked smoking pot with developing schizophrenia.
I want to tell you that as hard as it might be try to have empathy for your daughter. I know someone with bipolar who also stopped taking the BP meds and I could indeed understand any possible reason he might have for not taking them.
Stigma is a real issue and your daughter is young and impressionable. She might do anything to fit in with the crowd that showers her with attention when she's feeling low. Hence her only friends might be her fellow pot smokers at this time. She will obviously have to get away from, what's called in recovery the "people, places and things" that trigger her to get high.
Not wanting to be crazy or to be labeled crazy by other people is what I suspected made the person I know resist taking the BP meds. It's hard enough as an adult to grapple with the idea that someone's telling you that you have bipolar, it must be ten times worse for a young person to be told she has any kind of mental illness. Just placing the word "mental" in front of an illness is enough of a deterrent that most people would run in the opposite direction.
So first I would try to have empathy for her even though you know it's a mistake for her not to take the BP meds. It is possible her stint in Juvie will be exactly the wake-up call she needs. Will the state where she lives step in and legally require her to take the BP meds? I'm not sure but obviously she's a danger to herself right now and desperately needs to take her meds, so her mother might need to try to get an order for her to take them. The local NAMI chapter in her mother's city or town might be able to tell her how she can get a court order if it becomes necessary. Dial (800) 950-NAMI (6264) to find the name and phone number of the local chapter there.
I'm sorry but I've been so long here responding that you need to correct me if I forget where she lives, was it Yuma? Is that California? I believe in California they have something called Laura's Law which is similar to Kendra's Law in New York State. It's how you get someone a court order to take their psych meds.
I'm lucky the person I know decided to get help. I could understand how most people wouldn't understand someone's decision not to take the meds they so clearly need yet I understood how this could be.
Let me go stop analyzing this and find some articles I can post in another reply to you. I will see if I can dig up some specifically on cannabis and BP as well as pot smoking and SZ.
Regards,
Christina
Thank you very much for all the information, Christina. I've forwarded your response on to my daughter's mom. My daughter has been under house arrest for the last couple of days so she's been clean. I'm not sure how long this is going to last though. Take Care, Rene