Mental Health

[eredien]

The report called for a more streamlined system strongly focused on early diagnosis and treatment in patients' own communities, a high expectation of recovery and methods for helping people with mental illnesses find work and housing.

One proposed means of early diagnosis would use questionnaires to screen high-school students, with parental permission, for signs of mental or emotional disturbance, with follow-up testing and treatment for those who need it.

I think that every finding in this report (the article is on the New York Times website so you will need to sign in) about the state of mental health-care in the US is relevant, and some are actually amazingly efficient (use the money that we have more effectively instead of increasing spending? yay!).
But I don't think they should screen highschool students. A lot of people who need it might be helped, yes. But I've heard so many horror stories about this from people who didn't need the kind of help they were being given, and never heard any stories from people who said they were glad they were tested and put into therapy early in highschool (if you have one, please let me know. There must be people out there who were helped. I just don't know of any).

Comments

[prisminawindow.livejournal.com]

It looks like you were distressed by some of the same issues I was. I just blogged about it this afternoon actually. They probably meant well in making that suggestion about early screening, but GAH. That kind of thing scares me.