How can we improve mental health screening?

Medical care and understanding have changed since separation of physical and mental health made much sense. We know now that mental state and internal physiology influence one another and that social factors affect disease risk more powerfully than genetic ones. Still, as a health care system, we perpetuate a culture of division, and limit our capacity to help people because of our inability to categorize them neatly. There are so many with unmet mental health needs in our communities: The few with severe illness we can see and get to and sometimes fix, the many with less severe conditions we don’t know always how to reach. There’s the complex relationship between homelessness, mental illness, drug abuse, and crime. We invest in huge prison populations and now in treatment programs too, but less than ever on affecting the pathologies at the root of those problems. We are only as good as the care we take of our most vulnerable, and we are failing those least capable of calling attention to the fact. It’s understood that prevention is a cost-effective strategy for dealing with many types of illness, but it’s seldom discussed in the context of mental health. Like the annual physical or six-month cleaning at the dentist, there must be some value in a periodic screening or at least some amount of contact with a mental health professional for those at greatest risk. A worsening physical illness — back pain, pneumonia — becomes more diffic...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Conditions Primary Care Psychiatry Source Type: blogs