Should hidden mental health issues be exposed?

[ben_meyers]

After recent fatal campus shootings, ASU examines whether to require students to disclose mental health histories
by Matt Culbertson
published on Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Students' mental health history may no longer be private if campus safety recommendations are put into play.

ASU could begin reviewing this week whether it would be feasible and increase campus safety to require students to disclose their mental health histories.

A group of ASU staff members is finalizing a report with campus safety recommendations that could include requiring mental health disclosure, ASU spokeswoman Leah Hardesty said.

In the wake of the April 2007 Virginia Tech University massacre, the National Association of Attorneys General recommended universities have greater access to students' mental health records. Following this proposal, the ASU committee may recommend that students inform the University of any mental health problems that could affect campus safety, Hardesty said.

http://www.asuwebdevil.com:80/issues/2008/02/19/news/703749

I have 2 grandkids going to ASU at this time, I'm thinking that for the greater good some of their fellow students may have to give up some privacy, I don't need them home in caskets.

[NightWatcher]

1. not a fan of disclosing health private information. why not try enforcing current gun laws

forgive me for rehashing this if it was here last week- I was not

In my state if you have ever been adjudicated as mentally ill ( a lot of things fall under this heading), you are not allowed to posses a handgun. I know that the VT gunman should not have been able to purchase the guns that he used. I assume the same is in play at NIU.

We need to enforce ALL the laws that we have on the books before we begin writing new ones.

[Warpy]

3. HIPAA

prevents mental hospitals from sending patient names or information to the gun database.

A mentally ill person intent on purchasing a firearm to end his own life while he takes as many other people with him as he can simply has to lie on the form. He's not going to show up in the database.

That's some catch, that catch 22.

Fortunately for the rest of us, these cases are extremely rare. Think about what the release of such information would mean for people who are hospitalized briefly and returned to the world in a fully functional condition. They'd be stigmatized for the rest of their lives in a country that still regards mental illness as a moral failure.

I'd rather risk an occasional berserker than the invasion of privacy of hundreds of thousands of people who don't deserve it. The temptation is always to go the other way, though, because when it happens it seems like it should have been preventable.

Maybe some day it will be, when we define "danger to oneself or others" a lot more loosely than we do now.

[lurky]

2. What next, access for potential employers?

It's the next logical step once this is enacted, in the name of "workplace safety". In addition to checking your credit report, running your fingerprints, and testing your urine, your mental-health history will now be fair game.

Note that mental health is an extremely broad category that does not just include "crazies". We are talking about anyone who has been diagnosed with depression, an anxiety disorder, anorexia, addiction, etc. If this information becomes publicly available, anyone who has had one of these conditions can expect to lose jobs, promotions, academic opportunities, and be stigmatized in many many other ways.

This is very disturbing to me.

[my2sense]

5. Totally Agree

This is a slippery slope and many, many people would be caught in this trap. Hell based upon the number of people taking anti-depressants and other "legal mood altering" drugs (I use the term loosely) it would include a significant portion of citizens. Seems every other person I know has at one point or another been prescribed anti-depressants.

[ben_meyers]

6. While all that may be true, my granddaughter may pay

for that privacy with her life. I'm not even talking about the rare mass murder either. She has had 2 problems with so called stalkers in the last few years and has reported them to campus police. The word is always they can't do anything until something "bad" happens. Could they at least check and see if there might be something in the background that might warrant a closer look? One of these guys is thought to have "mental" problems, but that is only from other students with no way to confirm them.

Privacy may be a nobel goal, but when it infringes on other peoples safety it might take a backseat.

[noonwitch]

4. Mental Health treatment is not an exact science

Of course, whenever possible, we should do what we can to prevent this kind of thing from happening. That said, there really is no way to predict, out of a group of 10 guys with the same diagnosis, which one is going to go postal on everyone around him.

There are always going to be wackos-people need to have a plan to deal with them, but there is never going to be a 100% way to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

Then again, I think of the old SNL sketches with Eddie Murphy both as Buckwheat and as his assassin. There's the one sketch where the reporter goes to interview people in the assassin's hometown, and everyone interviewed said how nice of a guy he was. When asked whether they thought he killed Buckwheat, they all said "Yep, its all he talked about".

[ck4829]

7. This will start a vicious cycle

If I had mental health issues, I don't know if I'd feel very welcome at ASU if they did this.

What if other institutions decided to borrow the tactics of ASU and also required people to disclose their histories? Not just schools, but employment, housing, etc. purely hypothetical of course and even illegal in some instances.

In the end though, it will be those with mental health problems that will lose the most. It's sad too, because the majority of these mental illnesses are treatable and preventable, the problem is that Americans don't have universal access to health care.

[Jack Rabbit]

8. I am against disclosing medical information, but . . .

We need a more enlightened attitude toward mental illness. My name is Jack Rabbit, and I have a serious problem with clinical depression that I have described elsewhere in these forums. I was nearly hospitalized two years ago.

Mental illness is not a bad attitude. It doesn't help to think it is. Instead of seeking medical help for the problem, I kept thinking I could just "snap out it" for years. It doesn't work that way. Depression is caused by a lack of serotonin in the brain. The lack of serotonin makes a person more prone to anger, aggression and loss of sleep. Being an introvert, I'm more a potential suicide victim than a potential murderer.

What needs to be understood that it is an illness and that it is treatable. Rather than make the mentally ill bogey men to be feared, they should be regarded a sick people who need to see a doctor. A mentally ill person should not be locked in the attic with his disease, but encouraged to seek help.

[NMMNG]

9. No

Sadly there is still too much of a stigma attached to mental illness, and people tend to assume too much/know too little about it. When they hear "mental illness" many automatically think of bag ladies ranting in the streets, teenagers rampaging through their schools with automatic weapons and the like.


The reality is about 25% of Americans at any given time have some form of diagnosable mental illness, and with proper treatment and support many of them can and do live normal lives. Furthermore, the percentage of people with mental illness who engage in violence is very small, although the media would have us believe otherwise. People with mental illness are actually more likely to be victims than to victimize others.

[EFerrari]

10. No. We need to ensure continuity of care, not privacy violations. n/t