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].
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].