No Benefit, Possible Harm From Routine Depression Screening
September 23, 2011 — Routine screening for depression in primary care, as recommended by organizations in the United States and Canada, has not been shown to be beneficial, and may even be harmful, according to new research published online September 19 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. In addition, in this era of fiscal restraint, this screening is a waste of precious healthcare dollars, the authors write.
“Canadian and US task force recommendations suggest screening, and there are many places in Canada where there is screening going on, or healthcare bodies are putting in place provisions to screen patients for depression. Essentially they assume that it’s a good thing, but there is no evidence that it is,” lead author Brett D. Thombs, PhD, from McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, told Medscape Medical News.
They came to the conclusion that although the prevalence of depression and the availability of relatively easy-to-use screening instruments make it “tempting” to endorse widespread screening, they could find no benefit in the practice.
Read the full article on PsychNews.
Mental Health Screening
Recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.
Click here for more information about the history, practice, and hoax of mental health screening.