Generalized anxiety disorder involves a patient persistently worrying or having anxiety about one or more areas of life, with the worrying or anxiety being out of proportion to the source or event. Generalized anxiety can occur at any age.
Symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder can include, but are not limited to panic attacks, constant worry, restlessness, and trouble with concentration. Various treatments exist to treat generalized anxiety disorder, with the most common ones being pharmaceutical antidepressants and mood regulators.
A growing number of patients are turning to the cannabis plant for relief, and according to a recent study in the United Kingdom, cannabis products are safe and effective at treating generalized anxiety disorder. Below is more information about it via a news release from NORML:
London, United Kingdom: Patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) exhibit sustained improvements in their symptoms following the use of cannabis products, according to data published in the journal Psychopharmacology.
British investigators assessed the safety and efficacy of plant-derived cannabis products (either oils, flower, or a combination of both) in over 300 patients enrolled in the UK Medical Cannabis Registry. All of the participants possessed a doctor’s authorization to access cannabis products.
(Since 2018, specialists have been permitted to prescribe cannabis-based medicinal products to patients unresponsive to conventional medications.) Authors assessed the efficacy of cannabis at one, three, and six months.
Researchers reported improvements in patients’ anxiety, sleep quality, and overall quality of life at each time point assessed.
“Prescription of CBMPs [cannabis-based medicinal products] in those with GAD is associated with clinically significant improvements in anxiety with an acceptable safety profile in a real-world setting,” they concluded.
The findings are consistent with those of other studies documenting both short-term and sustained reductions in anxiety following patients’ use of either cannabis or CBD products.
Prior studies assessing the use of cannabis products in patients enrolled in the UK registry have similarly reported them to be effective and well-tolerated among those suffering from chronic pain, post-traumatic stress, depression, migraine, inflammatory bowel disease, and other afflictions.
Full text of the study, “Clinical outcome data of anxiety patients treated with cannabis-based medicinal products in the United Kingdom: A cohort study from the UK Medical Cannabis Registry,” appears in Psychopharmacology.
This article first appeared on Internationalcbc.com and is syndicated here with special permission.
