U.S. federal government on the verge of demanding mandatory mental health screening for teens (to add MORE psychiatric drugs to their plate)

Thursday, March 10, 2016 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
Tags: mental health screening, antidepressants, adolescents

---

(NaturalNews) Will screening for psychiatric illness soon join vaccines as an expected part of childhood?

The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPTF) recently updated its recommendations on the screening of children and adolescents for major depressive disorder (MDD), in an article in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The task force now recommends that all children aged 12 and up be screened for MDD as part of their regular doctor visits.

"The USPSTF recommends screening for major depressive disorder (MDD) in adolescents aged 12 to 18 years," the task force said. "Screening should be implemented with adequate systems in place to ensure accurate diagnosis, effective treatment, and appropriate follow-up."

The recommendation is not binding, nor does it constitute official government policy. However, it may show the shape of things to come. Should this recommendation be widely adopted, it will almost certainly lead to a surge in antidepressant use among children.

'Moderate' benefit

The USPSTF reviews scientific evidence about the benefits and harms of various preventive medical measures in people who have not been diagnosed with a particular illness. In this case, the task force reviewed evidence on screening children aged 7 and up for MDD. It did not find sufficient evidence to support screening children younger than 12, mostly because few studies have been conducted on this population.

"Adequate evidence" showed that screening is effective at detecting MDD in children aged 12 and up, the task force said. However, no studies had been performed to show that screening leads to improved health outcomes in this demographic; instead, the recommendation was based on "adequate evidence" that treatment of depression leads to "moderate benefit" in this age group.

The task force further reviewed evidence of harms from screening and various treatments for depression. No significant harms were found from screening, or from psychotherapy or psychosocial support as treatments. While acknowledging the risks of antidepressant drugs, the report attempts to downplay them: "Medications for the treatment of depression, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors ... have known harms. However, the magnitude of the harms of pharmacotherapy is small if patients are closely monitored, as recommended by the ... FDA."

"The USPSTF concludes with moderate certainty that screening for MDD in adolescents aged 12 to 18 years has a moderate net benefit," the report concludes.

The USPTF has also previously recommended screening all adults for MDD.

But what are the real risks?

However well intentioned, it is likely that increased screening of adolescents for MDD will lead to more children being treated with dangerous drugs. That's because although antidepressant drugs have been proven to be no more effective than a placebo – and both riskier and less effective than treatments such as talk therapy – they remain the treatment of choice for depression in the United States.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 11 percent of U.S. residents aged 12 and up already take antidepressants. Notably, only an estimated 7.6 percent of the population actually suffers from depression.

These figures reveal a fundamentally broken mental health system. For example, more than 60 percent of those on antidepressants have taken them for two or more years, while 14 percent have been taking them for 10 years or more. Yet, less than one-third of those taking a single antidepressant (and less than half of those taking more than one), have been to visit a mental health professional in the past year.

The USPTF recommendation also raises the specter of widespread screening for other mental health conditions, many of which have come under fire for being vague or even invented by the mental health profession.

"Psychiatry seems to have lost its way in a forest of poorly verified diagnoses and ineffectual medications," Edward Shorter of the University of Toronto, who studies the history of psychiatry and medicine, has written.

Sources for this article include:

TheNewAmerican.com

Annals.org

CDC.gov^[PDF]

CDC.gov

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

Science.NaturalNews.com