If you are in distress, you can call or text 988 at any time. If it is an emergency, call 9-1-1 or go to your local emergency department.

Home › Resources › Closing Research Gaps on Cannabis and Mental Health – Research Challenges

Closing Research Gaps on Cannabis and Mental Health – Research Challenges

Over the past five years, the MHCC has led a pan-Canadian program to assess the impact of cannabis legalization and use on the mental health of diverse populations. This document synthesizes the unique challenges teams experienced while conducting research in a newly legalized environment during a global pandemic. Researchers continue to call for more public funding of cannabis research to ensure that the public receives timely, accurate, representative, and unbiased information about cannabis and its potential therapeutic benefits and harms for mental health

Key findings:

  1. A newly legalized and regulated environment led to many unanticipated research delays and challenges.
  2. The COVID-19 pandemic caused immediate delays and additional research challenges.
  3. Despite the legalization of cannabis, persistent fear and stigma presented an additional barrier to participant recruitment and engagement.
  4. Despite challenges, research teams persisted and used innovative approaches.

Interested in the other reports in this series? Find them here!

Download the PDF

Feedback Form

Hey, thanks for checking out this resource. After you’ve seen it, we’d love to learn a bit more about your interests and how you found us. Was the information what you looking for? Was it helpful? We’ll use any feedback you provide to further improve what we do.

Are you willing to be contacted within 3 to 6 months for a short follow-up survey?
In case of “Yes” – please provide an email address
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

SHARE THIS PAGE

RELATED
Review Our Mental Health App Assessment Framework

Review our Assessment Framework for Mental Health Apps — a national framework containing key standards for safe, quality, and effective mental health apps in Canada.

Read More
E-Mental Health Implementation E-Modules

To help expand the use of e-mental health services, we developed four online learning modules based on our Toolkit for E-Mental Health Implementation, in collaboration with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

Read More
Stepped Care 2.0

Stepped Care 2.0© (SC2.0) is a transformative model for organizing and delivering evidence-informed mental health and substance use services.

Read More

Closing Research Gaps on Cannabis and Mental Health – Youth-Specific Findings
Over the past five years, the MHCC has led a pan-Canadian research program to assess the impact of cannabis legalization and use on the mental health of diverse populations. This...
READ MORE

Closing Research Gaps on Cannabis and Mental Health – Youth-Specific Findings
Over the past five years, the MHCC has led a pan-Canadian research program to assess the impact of cannabis legalization and use on the mental health of diverse populations. This...
READ MORE