as the personal freedoms go down the drain....

seriously, the first to be drugged are the "paranoid" ones.

PLEASE RELAX!!!! THIS SORT OF EFFORT IS NOT FEASIBLE!!! THE ECONOMIC COSTS ARE WAY TOO HIGH!!!

I should know -- I collect and analyze health-related data for a living (Amy --shhhh!!!)

Please believe me that when I read the line "Bush Plans to Screen Whole U.S. Population for Mental Illness," I threw my head back in WILD laughter. Thanks for posting this, AMY! I am completely stressed out on deadline right now. I feel like I just blew a load!

Since "practice what you preach" is a fine American tradition, it is to be hoped that initial screening efforts to diagnose and treat mental illness among Americans will begin in Washington, starting with the Executive Branch.

L'Amerloque

Hillary is behind all this (take my word for it) and when it's a done-deal we'll get Tipper to boot. Honest! I saw it coming.

Gotta disagree with Lena on this one. I have extensive personal experience with data capture systems that aggregate information from vast, disparate sources. Not only can Uncle Sam do this, the benefits of using a system for this purpose are applicable to many other areas of national health - like cancer and alzheimer's research. In short, there's a real return on investment for it. If this issue gets enough traction, things are going to get strange fast.

This thing has been on the horizon for a few months now. The more I hear about it, the more it concerns me.

http://www.enlightenedcaveman.com/2004/09/docilization-of-america.html

EC

The process of collecting sufficient data to establish some kind of mental health diagnosis for each person in this country would just be insanely expensive. How are "data systems that aggregate information from vast, disparate sources" comparable to screening the entire U.S. population for mental health problems? I agree that once you have health-related data in electronic format, it's easy to aggregate and merge and run all sorts of analyses that could threaten an individual's confidentiality, civil liberties, or whatever. That's why we have Institutional Review Boards. But I'm not talking here about the infeasibility of data ANALYSIS -- I'm saying that the data COLLECTION efforts necessary for establishing mental health diagnoses cannot be implemented with any real credibility for the entire U.S. population. Screening would only be the first step a very long process. More extensive and expensive interviews and tests would have to follow to establish diagnoses among the people screening positive. We can do this multi-stage random samples for the population, but not with the entire population.

Don't worry, Chris. Lena and the Angry Inch will launch a devastating critique on this silly pipedream of the Bush folks. They're just complete idiots.

Let me just say that, if anyone knows about this, it is Lena.

My experience is equally on the collection side and the analysis side. Electronic data capture systems are really surging in the pharma industry, where clinical trials sometimes include tens of thousands of participants in multiple countries. The collection techniques that are being used there are directly applicable to a national mental health screening program, and the conversations are happening (trust me on this).

If every elementary school nurse or counselor in the country has a connection to the internet, a preliminary screening can be done on each child in the school with a minimal incremental cost. It's not as if we can expect this screening to be comprehensive. We're talking about a questionnaire where certain answers raise red flags that prompt further investigation by more credentialed mental health professionals.

I'm not sitting around expecting this whole scenario to come to pass. However, the fact that people continuously dismiss it (for a variety of reasons, economics being only one) doesn't give me any confidence that the right forces will mobilize themselves when the time comes.

Back when FDR and pals proposed withholding federal income taxes from paychecks as a temporary measure to provide cashflow for WW2, critics claimed that the government would find a way to keep withholding long after the cash crisis was over. Enough people disagreed, saying that the people would never allow that to happen, that the measure passed. And here we are, 50+ years later, and if you ask people what they make, they'll tell you what they take home, not what their job pays.

So...the fact that this mental health screening is on the table is enough reason for people who care to take it seriously enough to mount persuasive arguments against it. Just my 2 cents.

Chris --

I know that huge clinical trials are conducted, but the participants in those studies aren't the general population. Clinical trial participants usually have some kind of illness, they've often exhausted all of their other options for treatment, and they're getting perks ($$$) to participate in the trial. A screening of the entire population is simply not going to roll forward like a clinical trial.

I think it would be wonderful if every child in this country were systematically screened for mental health and behavioral problems by competent health professionals -- not to stigmatize anyone, but rather to help them. I hope that many school counselors and teachers would feel the same way.

Leener Weener

Nice idea. I like the idea of socialized medicine and free medical care. Problem is, does anyone truly care to have THIS administration determining what is and isn't a mental illness? I'm sure the fact that I think Bush is the worst president in my lifetime would qualify me as mentally ill.

Would atheists be considered mentally ill? By Bush's standards, I'm sure they would be. How about homosexuals? Democrats? Socialists? Given the Republicans' historic x.enophobia (never illustrated better than the paranoid times of the McCarthy era), I wouldn't trust them to determine who is mentally ill.

Because they're all out to get me, you know. They are. I know the Republicans are out to get me personally. They have my phone lines tapped, and my computer, too. My car and my house are both bugged. And my boyfriend's house, too. They'd be monitoring my thoughts but I've got my trusty tinfoil beanie on... I'm too smart of them. Which is why they're out to get me.

Patrick --

Do you really think that the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the Lena Cuisina Foundation for Wayward Girls is going to tolerate any right-wing distortion of the clinical procedures used to diagnose and treat mental health problems? This is not about ideology. The Bush Administration may eliminate funding for public-sector health and social services programs, but it cannot and will not change standards of medical and public health practice. It CAN'T. IT'S JUST NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

By the way, Patrick, it's nice to "see" you. Where have you been, baby boy?

hugs,
Lena "Don't Go There" Cuisina

OK. I'll relent, but... I'm in the IT strategy business. I'm privy to high-level conversations with government agencies, and I know the technology (and intention to use it) exists. I also know that it will produce medical research benefits that will dwarf the costs. That said, I'll admit that there are still many political challenges to Bush's plan. So I have a question:

"Do you really think that the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the Lena Cuisina Foundation for Wayward Girls is going to tolerate any right-wing distortion of the clinical procedures used to diagnose and treat mental health problems?"

What exactly does it mean to "not tolerate" this?

I remember being a kid in Texas when every child in public schools was screened for lice. The guy who checked me was a coach. All clean, by the way. I know it's a stretch to get from mental health screening to screening for lice, but the point is that mass screenings for a medical condition were done at a grass roots level by non-medical personel. Who's to say the school nurse wouldn't be deemed capable of performing initial assessments of mental health? This gets Uncle Sam over the sheer magnitude of the problem, and gets him to his goal of digging into the heads of all American children.

Gotta sign off - Black helicopters overhead...

EC

'What exactly does it mean to "not tolerate" this?'

Why do you think HillaryCare collapsed? The AMA, the APA, the American Hospital Association, every single trade and professional association in the health care industry were shut out of the policymaking process. This is not the way to get things done. It is incredibly naive to think that any national health policy -- whether it's universal health coverage or mandatory mental health screenings -- can be successfully made and implemented without 100% buy-in from every kind of stakeholder.

Chris, I don't think your concerns are silly or anything like that. I'm kind of interested in the possible connections between medicine and social control too. Here's some books you might like (I certainly did):

Deborah Lupton. The Imperative of Health: Public Health and the Regulated Body.

Alan Peterson and Robin Bunton. Foucault: Health and Medicine. Routledge.

What do you do for fun? I'm halfway through an amazing chocolate cake I made tonight.

take care (and never mind the helicopters),
Lena

I play with my family, read (books, blogs, etc.), write (books, blogs, etc.), play music, and ride my bike. Pretty much in that order. And when I travel, I get loaded.

That about covers it. I don't sleep much.

Cheers -
EC