Some types of medical tests are easy. Well, they can be tricky if you’re scared of needles, but often a quick blood draw is all you need to identify the problem. Other conditions, however, require a more complicated analysis. That’s particularly true when it comes to mental illness.
One of the difficulties when it comes to mental health as opposed to physical health is that it’s much harder to objectively quantify. How do you measure things like how someone’s feeling at a certain time? Often it involves questionnaires and interviews, but people with a mental illness won’t always be direct about their experiences. They may not even know how to express them.
It gets even more difficult when it comes to trying to identify any childhood factors that may influence adult mental health. If you think it’s hard defining things in the present, imagine the extra challenge of trying to remember something from years ago first. Then there’s the fact that things like neglect and abuse are often contributors, and it can be very painful to talk about them.
Psychologists and psychiatrists won’t always confine their questions and testing to the patient themselves. With both genetic and environmental factors being so important in the development of mental illness, it can also be important to talk to parents, siblings, teachers and others who may either have observed the patient in their youth or may even display similar symptoms. That means even more challenges in trying to obtain an objective record.
That’s not to say there’s no physical element to diagnosing mental illness. Attempts to explain irrational or harmful human behavior may involve testing hormone levels or scanning the brain to see if there’s any damage. Having something you can point to as a clear cause makes it much easier to develop a treatment plan.
Being able to define and quantify an illness with objective, consistent and testable criteria is a vital part of identifying and treating it. That’s true even when you can’t see the cause. Establishing accurate testing is one of the most important ways to ensure that patients can have access to the support that they need.
This means being able to acknowledge the interplay of biological, psychological and environmental factors in the development of mental illness so that treatment can be tailored appropriately.
