Knowledge, attitudes, behavior, and experiences towards therapeutic cannabis use among clients receiving treatment in a cannabis clinic: A Thai folkway

Abstract

     The purpose of this study was to examine the knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and experiences of the therapeutic use of medical cannabis among clients receiving treatment in clinics. A simple random sampling technique was used to recruit 60 people at cannabis clinic, Kalasin hospital. The research instruments were (i) the personal data form, (ii) the medical therapeutic cannabis knowledge test, (iii) the medical therapeutic cannabis attitude test, and (iv) a semi-structured in-depth interview form. The content validity was ensured by three experts, and the CVI ranged from .80 to 1.00. The Cronbach’s alpha reliability for the KR-21 questionnaire’s parts II, III, and IV were .70, .84, and .58, respectively. The data was analyzed using the descriptive statistics.

     The results showed that 1) the knowledge about medical cannabis was at a moderate level ( = 6.08, SD = 1.93), 2) the attitude towards the use of medical cannabis in clinics was at a good level ( = 4.04, SD = 0.45), most of the medical cannabis clinics can help treat patients, and 3) concerning cannabis behavior, all the participants (100%) had no experience of cannabis use in the past and had not used it for their illness treatment. It was reported that the participants had good eating and sleeping patterns, weight gain, normal breathing, and dry and painless psoriatic lesions in their skin after receiving treatment from the medical cannabis clinic.

     These findings suggest that the physicians and staff in the medical cannabis clinics can use this as a guideline and consider it an alternative treatment option of modern medicine, and disseminating it to the public may aid in the decision-making process of using medical cannabis for future healthcare.