Imaging shows promise as mental health screening tool
Palm Beach Daily News | March 11, 2013

… After conducting neuroimaging scans of hundreds of college students, researchers with Massachusetts General Hospital revealed MRI scanning more accurately detects true psychiatric illness than students’ self-reporting. …

“… One in four adults in the U.S. is diagnosed with mental illness. ..”

All of a sudden someone claims to have the ability to objectively determine “risk” for “mental illness” before it happens with some neuroimaging hocus pocus?

So everyone is going to end up being scanned?

How will this reduce health care costs (the excuse)?

The exchange is giving up freedom – submitting to more control – in exchange for supposed “health” and supposed “lower health care costs”.

How will it make people healthier?

It’s very likely that everyone, even those who are normal and healthy, will be diagnosed with one of the many dubious disorders listed in the diagnostic manual DSM-5.

For example, Oppositional Defiance Disorder! Getting angry or being defiant is a very appropriate disorder for a totalitarian regime such as the Soviet Union. The Soviets locked people up in psychiatric hospitals who questioned the system.

What happens after “diagnosis” – or pre-diagnosis (like pre-crime)?

This article admits that existing therapies are not very effective! But what will the treatment be other than to push us on to their dubious brain-damaging drugs?

If diagnosed, what happens to the person’s brain on those drugs?

Will there be legal obstacles placed in their way by insurance companies, employers and governments as society becomes more oppressive with greater levels of scanning and monitoring?

Is everyone going to become more helpless and dependent on “authorities” to direct them through life?

If this goes ahead and becomes part of health care (or education or insurance or gun registration), it also amounts to an excuse for a massive collection of biometric data concerning our brains.

Related:
Mind and Psychiatry
Obama’s Brain Activity Map project (BAM)