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Last talk for today at @NZSkeptics is Maree Hackett on the importance of language in mental health assessment #NZSkepConf2019 #NZSkeptics2019
Maree asks us what we think mental health is. Lots of answers - wellbeing, being able to cope with stress, all sorts #NZSkeptics2019
In mental illness symptoms are the disorder & can be positive or negative #NZSkeptics2019
Maree asks why we need diagnoses - it’s a form of communication between all the people involved in health care & helps determine care and policy #NZSkeptics2019
Maree talking about the many classification systems for disorders - most famous is probably the American DSM which is up to DSM5 which lists symptoms #NZSkeptics2019
Personality disorder = list of things people do that we don’t like... #NZSkeptics2019
Maree talking about how subjective the DSM is - homosexuality was originally listed as a disorder in the DSM but voted to be removed #NZSkeptics2019
Maree showing the list symptoms of depression and explaining how everyone has a few of them from time to time. #NZSkeptics2019
Depression is when the feelings and symptoms are persistent and they start to interfere with people’s day to day life #NZSkeptics2019
Maree talking about how we laugh about things related to mental health compared to physical health #NZSkeptics2019
Maree talking about the men, hearts & minds study looking at the interplay between psychological well-being and cardiovascular symptoms in Aboriginal people in Australia #NZSkeptics2019
Study looked at 189 men belonging to 5 different language groups #NZSkeptics2019
Ended up working with the communities to adapt a questionnaire to try to identify those with depression #NZSkeptics2019
Then they carried out the ‘getting it right’ study to test the adapted questionnaire against the gold standard diagnostic tool #NZSkeptics2019
Found that the adapted questionnaire can be used to screen for depression & people were happy with it being used #NZSkeptics2019
GPs can use it as a screening tool to decide if a patient needs to assessed further #NZSkeptics2019
