Dr. Robin MacGregor Murray, professor of psychiatric research at King’s College London, is sitting in his living room in Wimbledon, London. Upstairs, his wife and colleague, Dr. Marta Di Forti, is talking with a patient over Zoom. The husband-and-wife team are two of the world’s leading researchers on cannabis and psychosis.
In 2004, the pair launched the Genetics and Psychotic Disorder study, examining the genetic and environmental causes of psychosis. Since 2019, Di Forti has been running the National Health Service’s first clinic for cannabis-induced psychosis. The initial pilot scheme had 20 patients. Demand for the service is only growing, with 30 or more patients participating by Zoom each week. Di Forti told the London Times that she gets “emails from parents and young people across the country asking to come to the clinic,” but they do not yet have the capacity. At present the staff are mostly operating virtually, on account of the pandemic, but they also admit roughly 200 patients to the hospital per year with florid cannabis-induced psychosis. In England, cannabis-related hospitalizations are on the rise, with a 57 percent increase between 2013 and 2018, from 19,765 to 31,130 patients.
