"Repeated mental health screens in schools" (relatively off-topic perhaps)

[Dolphin]

Over the years, I have pondered the issue of mental health screening in ME/CFS e.g. should all ME/CFS services have psychiatrists? There could be some benefits from spotting people who don't have ME/CFS at all or co-morbid conditions. But also some people might be inappropriately labelled with psychiatric issues (and the psychiatrist might influence the attitude of the whole service).

Another issue is childhood abuse: some ME/CFS services have started asking adults about this but this can have problems. Is this a good direction to go?

Often we can imagine the positives with screening programs, but sometimes possible negatives aren't discussed as much.

For anyone interested, here's a piece by the (renegade) psychologist, James C. Coyne, on why he is sceptical of mental health screens in schools:
http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/2013/11/16/repeated-mental-health-screens-in-the-schools/

[He also writes a lot about problems with mental health screens in cancer care but I haven't read much of that yet].

 

[Valentijn]

Doesn't sound bad on the face of it ... but the psychiatric profession would just use it as an excuse to overdiagnose and drug everyone. If they can claim patients with a physical illness are depressed purely based on having physical symptoms, then I'm sure they'll find a way to turn "I'm worried about how I'll do on an exam" into some label or another.

 

[vamah]

In the US there is already a growing concern that young children are being overmedicated for ADHD and similar because it is easier to medicate than to deal with the fact that some children do not take well to sitting at a desk all day.

I strongly suspect the same sort of thing might happen with depression. A child who might be rationally depressed because he is being bullied at school might be medicated because it is easier than dealing with the bullying problem.

In general, I get concerned when the gvernment wants to intrude further into peoples private lives on the flimsy premise that it impacts education or whatnot. Everything going on in a childs life impacts learning in some way. I would worry more about the damage psychiatry can do to young, easily influanced minds.