Canada's mental health nurses are being urged to pay closer attention to a pattern showing up on inpatient units: young adults with chronic suicidal thinking, repeated hospital stays, and frequent cannabis use as a coping strategy.
Writing in Canadian Nurse on Tuesday, registered nurse Eh Sue Kaw describes the caseload on an inpatient mental health and addictions unit serving a community of about 75,000. The patients in question are typically between 18 and 40, present with persistent suicidal ideation and co-occurring substance use — most commonly cannabis — and cycle back through hospital repeatedly.
The article frames the concern with recent population-based research and systematic reviews associating frequent cannabis use, particularly when it starts young, with higher rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and attempts, and earlier onset of psychosis. The piece is careful to present these as associations rather than proven causation, citing literature including Edalati et al. (2024), Cheek et al. (2025) and Matheson et al. (2025).
Its purpose is practical rather than statistical: practice considerations for nurses who assess suicide risk, so that cannabis use is asked about, documented and factored into care and discharge planning instead of treated as background detail. For frontline teams, the takeaway is that a substance many patients view as harmless self-medication belongs inside the risk conversation.
