This is a good point:
We routinely screen teeth and vision, but not the brain. It’s time for a national system of mental health prevention and care. Early detection can potentially save lives.
Here’s the other thing: We encourage people to get routine screenings all the time. We know the value of early diagnosis and prevention, and there are massive risks of serious complications when we don’t catch these issues early.
We know the same is true for mental health issues. We know they get worse without care and can often turn into physical complications, too.
But we don’t push mental health screenings and prevention in the medical industry similarly, even though we know that untreated mental health issues turn into a variety of serious complications as well.
I’ve written over the last few months about my diagnosis of diabetes and the medical care I’ve gotten. I appreciate the fact that my treatment plan included providers asking about my mental health. This kind of thing can be overwhelming, and in that kind of situation, it never hurts to ask and check on someone’s mental health. I don’t think everyone gets that same level of concern, and I’m not sure that, outside of a life-changing diagnosis, anyone would have been checking on my mental health in the same way.
It should be common. It should not be odd to look out for mental health in the same way we look out for any health issues. Waiting for things to reach crisis levels before we do anything is the opposite of what we encourage people to do with other healthcare issues. It’s time we asked why.