USPSTF recommends depression screening for all adults....

For most people, most depression goes away after a while, as do the other 90% of mental health issues we all face as we go through life.

So answering 'None' on a questionnaire like this is perfectly alright, it's the first step to take in dealing with the issue anyway.
 
From the form questionnaire & the score sheet it seems biased.
Examples:
All of the responses are multiple choice only.
The choices are (in the last 14 days)
Not at all =0
Several days = 1
More than 1/2 the days = 2
Nearly every day = 3
where is "Only one or two"?

The questions presuppose an issue & are ambiguous as well. For example if you ONLY answer the lowest possible response to question 5 (Poor appetite or over eating, no "light snacked because of an upset stomach on one day" response is possible) as the lowest response "Several days" you score a 1 (out of a possible 27), you're in a state of depression. The test now only qualifies HOW depressed you are, not if you are depressed.:rolleyes:

In the final scores section there are 5 possible scores. The lowest possible (except for perfect "0") are all some severity of depression. There is no "Normal, not depressed" answer or score possible.
 
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i have a question for those who use the VA. what forces you to answer those questions at all. why cant you just refuse or put not applicable if on paper. because someone asks me a question doesnt mean i have to answer it.
 
heyjoe said:
i have a question for those who use the VA. what forces you to answer those questions at all. why cant you just refuse or put not applicable if on paper. because someone asks me a question doesnt mean i have to answer it.
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I don't know what would happen if I declined to answer. I don't poke tigers with sharp sticks, either.

You, as the patient, have no control over what the providers put in your record at the VA. If you decline to fill out a "simple lifestyle assessment," they could put down that you are uncooperative, or they could put down that you are concealing a mental issue, or they could put down that on the basis of observation they believe you have PTSD. The point is, who knows what they might write? Why take the chance, when it's easy to just circle all the zero answers and hand in the paper?
 
Does your soul have a cold?

Japan had no word for clinical depression and people had days that they were happy and days when they were unhappy and that was life.
Pfizer noticed this state of affairs and ran a series of ads that asked if "your soul has a cold" & within a year people were buying pills like candy to cure their "depression". As long as there is money to be made, it's very likely that some mental defect will be found,
IMO the UPSTF represents junk science at it's worst.
 
Don't get me started on Freudian Analysis, if you want to talk about junk science.

The turn of the 20th century saw thousands of quacks and charlatans practicing medicine and pushing bogus 'patented' lotions and cures. It's ludicrous to believe that university professors were not capable of foisting the same level of fraud on the public.
 
Junk Science

To me the entire mental health industry is ripe with junk science.

Up until 1974, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental illness One day in 1974, there was a National conference and in the morning homosexuality was an illness. In the afternoon it became a form sexual preference. This didn't happen because of a study or expert paper or new discovery on the matter. They had a vote. I have no problem with their conclusion, but their procedure. Just having a vote, doesn't seem to use rigorous scientific procedure.

Freud wrote a lot about why women fainted. There were all kinds of reasons for their fainting. It's turned out that the women Freud had contact with, wore whale bone corsets which were very tight and constricted their breathing. When the fashion changed and women stopped wearing corsets they stopped fainting. DUH

Freud also wrote that people with tattoos had violent and criminal tendency's. I think half the young people I know have at least one tattoo and they don't seem particularly more violent or criminally inclined then the population at large.
 
Freud wasn't necessarily wrong, considering the era, and the people he studied.

TODAY, things are a bit different in many ways, and his observations may not apply as well.

My biggest issue with mental health as a "science" is that, to me, science should not be based on opinion, but on repeatedly provable facts.

ALL mental health evaluations boil down to the evaluators opinion of what the subject tells them.

In a way, this is the opposite of a veterinarian. The animal can't tell the doc anything, and does not lie. The mental health doc can only go on what the patient tells them, and the patient CAN lie.

I'm not arguing that they don't ever do good things for people, or that depression isn't a serious matter, but doesn't it boil down to opinion and guesswork in the end?

Regarding depression, screening, and such things, my worry is that our bureaucratic system will create a standard that is "one size fits all", and force legal restrictions on our rights, based on whether or not we meet an entirely arbitrary standard of "happiness", or "wellness" or some other buzzword of the day.

The dilemma is truth (and possible adverse consequences) or lie to avoid the risk?

There are those of us who, in truth do not fit the "standard", and yet are happy with their lives, and who do not appreciate someone else's ideas of how they should live. But its like that with about everything, isn't it?
 
In the old Soviet Union, political dissidents were regularly sent to mental institutions. I have no doubt that we have a few people institutionalized that are merely eccentric or are just having a down spell and happen to have good insurance.
 
44 AMP said:
In a way, this is the opposite of a veterinarian. The animal can't tell the doc anything, and does not lie. The mental health doc can only go on what the patient tells them, and the patient CAN lie.
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Too true, and I think I'm living through a case study. My adopted daughter (recently turned 21) hails originally from South America. Because her SAT scores were worse than abysmal, but her scores on the equivalent test in her native country were very high, she has been attending college back there. Since last June she has attempted suicide at least eight times (that I know about). She has been seen by multiple psychiatrists and psychologists, she has spent weeks in in-patient clinics, she is in therapy and on medication ... and Saturday she tried to kill herself again.

What I am finally piecing together is that none of the therapies, medications, or interventions work because she doesn't want them to work. In a word, she lies to the doctors. She's going into another clinic this week. She told me that the doctor wants to communicate with me. (Which is something I've been asking for for six months). I asked if the doctor speaks English. She responded, "I don't know, but I can help him write the e-mail."

No, Honey, I don't think that's therapeutically valid. I want to know what the doctor says and thinks, not what you want me to think he says and thinks.
 
she doesn't want them to work.
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Tragic, but true, all too often.

There's an old joke "how many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?"

"only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change..."

My own personal experience with "professional" therapy might have soured me a bit on the whole idea, and I do try to overlook it in principle, but don't always succeed.

Without going into the details, the advice I got was just simply wrong. Since then I do sometimes wonder how many other people get treatment but don't actually get any help.

And, literally, people who don't want help, don't get any, no matter how much effort is put into treatment.

Every case is different, because everyone is different. My concern (and I know I'm beating this horse pretty hard) is them wanting to fix what I don't think is broken, using a process that doesn't take ME into account other than as plot points on a graph based on my response to loaded questions.

Anyone else see the possibility of a slippery slope here? Any bets on how long it is until a "perfect" score will also be a sign of a problem?? After all, denial is part of the problem, right????

When the money is there, people without problems will be diagnosed as needing treatment, too. after all, the doctors know what they're doing.....

Sorry for the rant, but I don't see this as the camel's nose poking into the tent, more like the Kraaken's tentacle wrapping about your ankle...
 
Obama has said any one who served should not have firearms..The Social Security Administration has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking ... they have served in the military or not, they should be barred
 
peggysue said:
Obama has said any one who served should not have firearms..The Social Security Administration has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking ... they have served in the military or not, they should be barred
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:confused:

Are you referring to the policy of reporting people who have designated recipients for their Social Security benefits being reported to NICS as being "incompetent"? If so, I believe that is already being done, by Social Security and by the VA for veterans' benefits and pensions.
 
Obama has said any one who served should not have firearms..
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Well you certainly wouldn't want those who you knew to be well trained to fight having the tools to do so, if what you were looking to achieve was a population that could not fight back.

That just sounds like a common sense gun law to me! :eek:
 
Obama has said any one who served should not have firearms..
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it would be really nice if you could provide some context for this statement.

Even though some of us are still clinging to our guns and our religion, such a statement seems to me to be a tremendous insult to all veterans and serving military, and I doubt even Obama would do such in a public setting.

in a private setting I could see it, but without some kind of proof, its just hearsay. It's the kind of thing I would expect, but without some proof where and when he said it, I simply cannot credit it at face value and without context.
 
Clock has some good points ! Recent info about anti-depression drugs, they will do serious damage to a fetus of young 'depressed' women. Some drugs will DOUBLE the suicides and violent behaviour of the patients !
The "mental and emotional " symptoms may in fact be nutritional deficiences , various diseases[ allergy, Lyme,etc] which are often ignored !!!
Those doctors should be forced to check other possibilities before just looking at the head !
 
It is a widely known, and almost never mentioned fact that a certain percentage of people react ..untypically..to certain drugs.

Some people become paranoid and even violent on Prozac or other such meds.
Not most, only a small percentage, but some DO.

The mass murders of the late 80s and 90s who's acts lit the fire under the "ban assault weapons" movement, were often on prescription meds for their mental health. In some cases they were on more than one, and mixed their doc-shopping with illegal street drugs as well.

Prozac became the most prescribed drug of its decade, so I have heard. Nearly a miracle drug. Worked well for a lot of Docs, take this, see me in a month...My wife's aunt was put on it. She turned out to be one of the ..exceptions... She didn't mellow out and get stable, she got spun up. Fortunately, she eventually realized what it was actually doing to her, and stopped using, before formal assault charges had to be filed. Things did work out, but for a while it was touch and go.

The current buzz is about the guns, of course, and "mental health" and background checks. Curious no one is mentioning the prescription drugs that still affect some people the wrong way. Have they worked out those bugs in the last few years? Because it was an issue, back then. Wonder why its not an issue now.

Maybe that background check should include what meds you are on? Oh, wait, sorry, that's legally protected privacy.

Like the medical privacy that allowed Patrick Purdy to pass the CA 15 day wait and background check TWICE (buying a pistol each time), despite the fact that he was getting payment from Social Security because he was mentally ill, and unable to work....

There's a serious down side to every one of these proposals, and they NEVER do what they are claimed to do. Why is it so many people keep listening to the those that lie to them?? (ok, rhetorical question, I don't expect an answer)
 
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