Suicidal Ideation Induced by Episodic Cannabis Use

The report describes a patient who presented suicidal ideation only in two different occasions, immediately after acute cannabis intoxication. He used cannabis only in these two circumstances. Although a definite association between cannabis use and suicidal ideation or behavior has been already reported in the literature, the described case presents two original clinical aspects that deserve consideration. First, episodic assumption of cannabis induced suicidal ideation abruptly. Second, suicidal ideation appeared independent of mood depression, stressors, or life events, suggesting that suicidality may be not a direct consequence of depression and appears to be a relatively independent psychopathological dimension. There seems to be no linear relation between the severity of depression and the risk of suicide. Copyright © 2009 M. Raja and A. Azzoni. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1