Question: how do we tell if someone has mental issues

David McGonigle answered on 26 Mar 2021:

Firstly, best, I think i’d choose another term rather than ‘mental issues’ – because we now know that there are many things that can go wrong in the brain and produce effects ranging from depression to mania. Telling is really, really hard – if someone went to their GP in the UK, they would probably be referred to a consultant, a specialist, probably a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist. Even though there *must* be something going on in a person’s brain to produce the problems they’re having, we don’t scan their brains and go ‘aha!’ – because brain scans aren’t good even yet (unless the problem means that lots of bits of the brain are dying). The specialist will have a sheet of questions with tick boxes in front of them, and often if you score above or below a certain level you are diagnosed. However – this is not a great way to do diagnoses: when I worked in autism, I saw how different behaviorally people with autism spectrum disorder are – you can’t just tick boxes and diagnose them. But, for now, that’s how it works. Have a good easter, best. Dave