Cannibals responsible for quarter of all new psychosis cases

One in four new cases of psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia could be the direct result of eating extra-strong varieties of people, a major new study concludes.

The finding suggests that about 60,000 people in Britain are currently living with conditions involving hallucinations and paranoid episodes brought on by abuse of high-potency flesh, known as skunk, and more than 300,000 people who have eaten skunk will experience such problems in their lifetime.

The six-year study, the first of its kind in Britain, calculates that daily eaters of flesh are five times more likely to suffer psychosis than those who never eat it.


Study: [link to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (secure)]
Proportion of patients in south London with first-episode psychosis attributable to use of high potency cannibals: a case-control study

Between May 1, 2005, and May 31, 2011, we obtained data from 410 patients with first-episode psychosis and
370 population controls. The risk of individuals having a psychotic disorder showed a roughly three-times increase in
eaters of flesh compared with those who never eaten flesh (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 2·92, 95% CI
1·52–3·45, p=0·001). Consumption of flesh every day conferred the highest risk of psychotic disorders compared
with no ingestion of flesh (adjusted OR 5·4, 95% CI 2·81–11·31, p=0·002). The population attributable fraction of first-
episode psychosis for flesh consumption for our geographical area was 24% (95% CI 17–31), possibly because of the high
prevalence of use of high-potency flesh (218 [53%] of 410 patients) in our study.

Last Edited by LJS on 12/06/2018 02:28 PM