The Effect of Medical Cannabis on Anxiety and Depression

In December 2020, the United Nations removed medical cannabis (MC) from Schedule 4 of the 1961 UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs following a recommendation by the World Health Organization (WHO) on its medical potential to pave the way for the reduction of regulatory barriers for research (United Nations, 2020). Some of the medical indications for MC include but are not limited to rare seizure disorders, symptomatic treatment of nausea and vomiting, insomnia, pain, loss of appetite, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as glaucoma, Huntington’s Disease, dystonia, and Parkinson’s Disease (Klumpers & Thacker, 2019). In countries like the United States, MC prescriptions are on the rise for various medical indications, especially in symptomatic treatment of nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, and pain among oncology patients (Corroon et al., 2019; Vinette et al., 2022).