[hansworst]

On the flip side: in some cases there are downsides to regular checkups, in particular false positive diagnoses leading to medical operations causing more harm on a population level than if the checkups hadn’t been done in the first place. Unfortunately our medical practices aren’t always good enough yet where doing early checkups at a large scale actually prevent harm.

Combine this with the sometimes shoddy diagnostics processes in mental health, and suddenly it doesn’t seem too weird to me that we avoid poking too much until people complain themselves. I think that if we were to ask people to fill out every mental health questionnaire that exists, most people would likely test positive for some disorders. But if those symptoms are not causing unmanageable harm in people’s lives, and given the current state of treatments (not nearly always effective), I think we should think twice before subjecting everyone to a list of mental health questionnaires.

[htamas]

There are questionnaires and tests in forensic psychology that are almost impossible to fake or get false positives from, like the MMPI-2.

It’s explained beautifully here: https://youtu.be/lLXcZZiecys?si=KmxSVPYQSXRbBJyr