Methamphetamine, psychosis and family history with Rebecca McKetin

Addiction Audio

In this episode Ben Scher talks to Dr Rebecca McKetin about her recent article looking the relationship between psychosis, psychotic symptoms and methamphetamine use. They discuss the implications and talk about who exactly is at risk of methamphetamine-related psychosis. Along the way, they cover the background of methamphetamine use in Australia and how this varies from country to country.

They then discuss the relative risk for psychotic symptoms among people with and without a family history of psychosis. The risk also changes when people are (or are not) actively using methamphetamine. Rebecca also talks about the potential for people to progress to schizophrenia and how treatment services should respond. Rebecca talks about the range of interventions that could be used to address methamphetamine related risks use and drug-related mental health problems.

We need to target methamphetamine use as a risk factor for psychosis, regardless of whether people have a history of psychosis on their family.... the other one is that we need to be looking at people who do have a family history of psychosis at being at very high risk of having psychotic symptoms.

Original article: How does a family history of psychosis influence the risk of methamphetamine-related psychotic symptoms: Evidence from longitudinal panel data by Rebecca McKetin and colleagues. Published in Addiction (2023)

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