The market for products containing cannabidiol, or CBD, has exploded in recent years. Surveys show 14%-33% of U.S. adults have used CBD at some point. People take it for all kinds of health issues, including pain and insomnia, without much hard science to show whether it works.
Scientists are studying it as a potential treatment for diseases including Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, and mental health conditions including schizophrenia, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression. There’s evidence that CBD can offer some help to people who have anxiety or depression. But very little research has been done, and there’s plenty of reason to proceed with caution.
What Is CBD?
Cannabidiol is a chemical compound found in the Cannabis sativa plant, a species that includes both hemp and marijuana. It’s different from the other main compound in cannabis, THC, in the way that it binds to certain receptors in your brain. It doesn’t make you feel “high.”
In the U.S., it can be legally manufactured from the hemp plant, and it is sold in many different forms. You can take it by mouth as an oil, a capsule, or a spray, or spread it on your skin as a lotion or oil. It’s added to food, drinks, pet products, and personal items like cosmetics, and it’s even infused into fabric. Depending on your state laws, you can buy it online, in specialty stores, or in your neighborhood grocery or drugstore.
What’s the Evidence for CBD in Anxiety and Depression Treatment?
You may have heard from a friend or read online about people who swear CBD helped with their mental health issues. But there have been very few scientific studies comparing the effects of CBD to the effects of another medicine or a fake medicine called a placebo.
Anxiety. More than a dozen studies have been done on lab animals over the past 3 decades that showed that depending on the dose, CBD could reduce behavior similar to anxiety in people. A handful of studies have been done with people that had similar results.
- Two studies from 1974 and 1982 found that CBD lowered anxiety caused by taking THC.
- A 1993 study found less anxiety in people who took CBD and then performed a public speaking test.
- People in a small study published in 2003 reported feeling less anxious after taking CBD than those who took a placebo.
- Two studies published in 2011 found CBD reduced symptoms in people diagnosed with social anxiety disorder.
- A study published in 2019 showed CBD worked better than a placebo for teenagers with social anxiety.
- Young people whose regular anxiety medicine wasn’t working well showed improvement after adding CBD in a study published in 2022.
- Results from the first phase of an ongoing trial using CBD and other cannabis compounds published in 2022 found the medication could ease symptoms over 4 weeks.
The Drug Enforcement Administration changed its rules about CBD in 2015, making it easier to use it for research. More than a dozen studies are going on now or are being set up to test the effect of CBD on anxiety. Some involve people diagnosed with anxiety disorders. Others are looking at anxiety in people with cancer or other diseases.
Depression. Anxiety and depression are often treated using the same drugs, showing they may be influenced by the same brain processes. So it makes sense that if CBD works for anxiety, it might also work for depression. But there have been even fewer studies focusing on depression specifically. Almost 2 dozen animal studies found CBD can have an antidepressant effect.
- In a survey of more than 2,000 people, more than 1 in 6 reported using CBD to manage depression. Almost two-thirds of them said it worked very well or moderately well.
- The study published in 2022 on young people that showed a benefit for anxiety symptoms also found significant improvement in depression symptoms.
