Psychosis growing more common among young adults

People born during the few years either side of 2000 are seemingly more vulnerable to conditions such as schizophrenia than those who grew up earlier, going by findings released by the Canadian Medical Association.

As they pored over health data from around 12.2 million people born in Ontario between 1960 and 2009, the researchers found an increase in reported and recorded “psychotic disorders” among “more recent birth cohorts.”

“Between 1997 and 2023, the annual incidence of psychotic disorders increased by 60% among people aged 14 to 20 years,” according to Canada-based ICES, formerly known as the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Science.

People born between the turn of the millennium and 2004 were estimated as having a “70% greater rate of new diagnoses of psychotic disorders compared with those born in 1975 to 1979,” the team says. Those born between 1990 and 1994 were 37.5% more likely to be diagnosed as such compared to those born in the late 1970s.

“Although some of the findings may reflect improved access to assessment and treatment, further research is needed to examine potential contributors,” ICES says.

“The observed trends raise important questions about possible causes and consequences of increasing numbers of psychotic disorder diagnoses,” says Daniel Myran, a scientist at ICES and the Bruyère Health Research Institute, who carried out the research with colleagues from North York General and Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.

People diagnosed with psychosis were “more likely to be male” and to “live in low-income neighborhoods,” the team reveals.

Other recent research has pointed to a link between psychosis and cannabis, the use of which for medicinal and recreational purposes has been liberalized in recent years in many jurisdictions—Canada included.

And still other investigations have found people in the “Generation Z” age group, now mostly in their twenties, to be more anxious and easily offended than older generations.

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