Posted by stan_the_man70 on February 20, 2015, at 2:21:50
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/are-americas-high-rates-mental-illness-actually-based-sham-science
--------------- quote reference---------------- snippets from article below
About one in five American adults (18.6%) has a mental illness in any given year, according to recent statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health. This statistic has been widely reported with alarm and concern.
But what NIMH quietly made disappear from its website is the fact that this number actually represented a dramatic drop.
Already, we have to wonder how significant a lot of these mental illnesses are, if they dont at all impair someone's functioning.
But if some depressions or anxieties last only a week or month, then its possible that at any time as few as 1-2% of the population are mentally ill.
But even that number may be overblown. Thats because these national-level statistics come from surveys of the general population using mental health screening questionnaires that produce extremely high false positive rates.
The politics of "mental illness"
Why is 18.6% the going rate of mental illnesses in America? SAMHSA's report takes many pages to explain all the adjustments they made to arrive at the numbers they did. However, its easy to imagine why they'd avoid going much higher or lower. If SAMHSA scored 90% of us as mentally ill, how seriously would we take them? Conversely, imagine if they went with a cut-off score that determined only 0.3% were mentally ill, while the rest of us were just sometimes really, really upset. How would that affect public narratives on Americas mental health crisis and debates about the importance of expanding mental health programs?
However well-meaning, the professional mental health sector develops such statistics to create public concern and support for their positions, to steer people towards their services, and to coax money out of public coffers. These statistics are bluffs in a national game of political poker. The major players are always pushing the rates as high as possible, while being careful not to push them so high that others skeptically demand to see the cards theyre holding. This year, 18.6% is the bet.
-----------------------author
Rob Wipond is an investigative journalist and News Editor for the website Mad In America.
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thread:1076926
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20150129/msgs/1076926.html