David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
We're All Mentally Disordered: College-Age Edition
Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry: A Closer Look
Monday, January 05, 2009
A study in the December 2008 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry concluded that almost half of college aged Americans suffered from a DSM-IV disorder over a one-year timeframe. Yes, I am behind the curve on this one -- Furious Seasons was all over this last month (1, 2). Rather than rant about the very odd idea that half of young adults are suffering from a mental disorder, I want to start by mentioning one aspect of the study -- perhaps the most important one. Let's look at how the diagnoses were assigned. To quote from the study:
I mean no disrespect toward the Census Bureau interviewers. They are performing important work that in many instances helps us to better understand the health of the nation. All I'm saying is that we might want to avoid uncritically accepting judgments of our nation's mental health based on interviewers who lack mental health training and experience.
1 Furious Seasons
2 Furious Seasons
Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry: A Closer Look
Monday, January 05, 2009
A study in the December 2008 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry concluded that almost half of college aged Americans suffered from a DSM-IV disorder over a one-year timeframe. Yes, I am behind the curve on this one -- Furious Seasons was all over this last month (1, 2). Rather than rant about the very odd idea that half of young adults are suffering from a mental disorder, I want to start by mentioning one aspect of the study -- perhaps the most important one. Let's look at how the diagnoses were assigned. To quote from the study:
All of the diagnoses were made according to DSM-IV criteria using the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Alcohol Use Disorder and Associated Disabilities Interview Schedule?DSM-IV version, a valid and reliable fully structured diagnostic interview designed for use by professional interviewers who are not clinicians.
If the interviewers are not clinicians, on what basis are they trained to understand what makes for truly significant distress that might justify a mental health diagnosis versus someone who is suffering from more mild symptoms that do not comprise a mental disorder? Here's some information from a different study that used a different slice of the same overall dataset on which the December 2008 study was based:Approximately 1800 lay interviewers from the US Bureau of the Census administered the NESARC using laptop computer?assisted software that included built-in skip, logic, and consistency checks. On average, the interviewers had 5 years? experience working on census and other health-related national surveys. The interviewers completed 10 days of training. This was standardized through centralized training sessions under the direction of NIAAA and census headquarters staff.
So the figures that will be trotted out in the media ad infinitum about the shoddy mental health of American youth are based on laptop-assisted interviews conducted by people who apparently have no formal training in mental health. Maybe mental health and related disability are really so easy to assess that we don't need experienced, formally trained interviewers. If that's the case, maybe we should just have Census Bureau interviewers provide initial mental health assessments in clinical care settings -- after all, if they are such good mental disorder detectors, couldn't we just train a bunch of interviewers rather than spend millions of dollars training and paying mental health professionals? Think of the savings! I mean no disrespect toward the Census Bureau interviewers. They are performing important work that in many instances helps us to better understand the health of the nation. All I'm saying is that we might want to avoid uncritically accepting judgments of our nation's mental health based on interviewers who lack mental health training and experience.
1 Furious Seasons
2 Furious Seasons
