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Written question asked by Lord Lansley (Conservative) on Thursday, 10 December 2009, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 14 December 2009. It was answered by Phil Hope (Labour) on Wednesday, 16 December 2009 on behalf of the Department of Health.

Cannabis: Misuse

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many (a) people and (b) people under 18 years old were treated for cannabis-induced psychosis in each of the last five years.
Answer

Data are not collected centrally about how many people were treated for cannabis-induced psychosis each year because data counts patient episodes, not individual patient numbers, and individual patients may be seen more than once during each year.Data are collected centrally about the number of finished hospital admission episodes for patients with a primary diagnosis of mental and behavioural disorders due to use of cannabinoids, under the care of a mental health consultant. This information is shown in the following table.Data are not collected centrally about the numbers treated for cannabis-related mental illness in primary care.

Finished admission episodes with a primary diagnosis of mental and behavioural disorders due to use of cannabinoids: activity in English national health service hospitals and English NHS-commissioned activity in the independent sector 2004-05 to 2008-09 under consultant mental health specialties
2004-05 2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09
Total all ages 752 786 616 579 519
Aged 18 years or over 708 745 570 553 499
Aged under 18 years 44 41 32 26 19
Age not known 0 0 14 0 1
Source:
Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), The NHS Information Centre for health and social care.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
502 c1311-2W; 307362
Session
2009-10
Subjects
Cannabis Misuse
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk