Mental health screening

Jackson, G. (2006b). Mental health screening in the schools Essentials of informed consent. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, 8, 217-224. 

Aust A (2000) Modem treaty law and practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Besco RE (2000) The myths of mental health screening. Air Safety Week 14(47) 20, November... 

Effrem, K. (2005, May 11). Myths and facts about Minnesota s plan to screen the mental health of toddlers. Retrieved from http //www.edwatch.org/updates05/051105-mhtw.htm... 

There is a successful movement within psychiatry, implemented in many states, that makes it easy to force clinic outpatients to take long-acting injections of drugs. Under these outpatient commitment laws, if the person refuses to come to the clinic, mental health workers can come to the home to administer the injections by force. At the same time, there is a movement to screen schoolchildren, and even preschoolers, for so-called mental illness. This potentially disastrous movement is driven by drug company money and aims at increasing the market for their products. 

Alcoholism is ubiquitous and often occult. All physicians are instructed to screen for SUDs, and this is also an essential component of every mental health assessment. There are many tools to accomplish this, and one of the simplest was advocated by the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA has suggested the CAGE questions about alcohol use as a routine screening test for every adult and adolescent. The CAGE questionnaire consists of the following four questions ... 

Sample letter 4 (see Figure 9.4) is written to a mental health care professional who is acting as the screening clinician in the psychiatric emergency department of the county mental hospital. There is no mention of a release of information or consent from the patient, allowing the therapist and screening clinician to speak to each other. It would be good... 

Because of the tremendous scope of the Twin Towers disaster, and the fact that there were so few of the physically injured to care for, 9/11 turned out to be primarily a mental health disaster. Experience with such disasters has served only to emphasize the importance of recruiting, screening, and training mental health professionals, paraprofessionals, and volunteers in order to have the personnel necessary to respond to the specific short- and long-term needs of those exposed to the disaster. 

Internet Mental Health (IMH). Best non-government Website devoted to depression and other mental disorders. Virtually every other depression site links to IMH s outstanding diagnosis and treatment pages. The site s interactive screening test provides a fairly reliable guide to depression. depression.mentalhelp.net... 

Columbia University s adolescent, mental health Website. Its main feature is a screening program which teens or parents can use to evaluate depression risk. Also lists resources for treatment. 

The Lyphocheck urine has been optimized such that the drug concentrations lie above the recommended cut-offs for screening determinations recommended by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (formerly the National Institute of Drug Abuse, NIDA) and the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). This standard urine is prepared from human urine to which no preservative is added and is lyophilized to improve its stability. 

The committee is concerned about several areas of the psychological response to chemical or biological terrorism. Among these areas of concern are the training of mental health professionals, methods for screening victims, and communication to the general public. Therefore, the committee has identified the following research and... 

It is of vital significance that workers be physically and mentally suited to the tasks they are required to undertake. Pre-employment medical examination, or health screening by an occupational health nurse, is a standard feature of the recruitment policies for many organisations. 

Unfortunately, mental health professionals, such as psychologists and psychiatrists, are often not part of the multidisciplinary team responsible for LTMV patients. Therefore, an efficient referral system to access mental health professionals must be in place, so that psychological issues can be addressed before they become major comorbidities. Optimal care should include simple screening for psychological s)unptoms at the same time as the physical assessment, and on an annual basis thereafter (16). The screening can be conducted by any health care professional able to administer the screening tool. Suitable tools are brief, easy to administer, and have known psychometric properties. 

It is useful to remember that the optimization of a methodology comprehensive of both the pretreatment and the analysis must take into account the specific conditions that must be used. For example, the number of the samples to be analyzed must be considered but also the expected proportion of positive samples. Methodologies and laboratory organization are different for (1) a laboratory that provides a regional screening service for abuse for the local mental health trust and receives about 26,000 samples per year (42), (2) laboratories that handle samples for pre-employment screening where the expected proportion of positive samples is much lower, or (3) cases of forensic interest in which it is often very useful to collect the maximum of information about all the species present. 

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