The CDC found that over 50% of all Americans will at some point in their life be diagnosed with a mental health disorder, that 1 in 5 Americans will have a mental health disorder within a given year. A recent study from Indiana University found that 45 % of all emergency room patients are also suffering from mental health issues.These are large and significant numbers of people who need help. These are people falling into drug addiction and alcoholism. These are people who might snap and take a loaded gun into a shopping mall. Because mental health diseases are so widespread, almost ever American is affected by them. If these were physical ailments, alarms would be blaring across the country.

A yearly physical check-up is routine for most Americans — particularly after you have reached age 40. The check up is done whether the person is feeling healthy or sick. The yearly check up allows a doctor to evaluate what is going with the patient from year to year in the hopes of catching and treating hidden diseases earlier than waiting until the patient develops full blown symptoms.

Mental health, on the other hand, is almost always a reactive action. The person breaks down and his condition, now obvious, has to be addressed. This is hardly an effective approach. Early treatment is a better, cheaper and less toxic approach. Why wait until the person has mentally fallen apart when, if the person had periodic psychiatric check ups, any mental health issues can be addressed before a person has hit bottom.

Working with young people is a great place to start such a practice as mental illness often emerges after adolescence. It is also during people’s youth that they are free from parental control and are experimenting for the first time with alcohol and drugs. These illnesses and addictions would be found earlier and hopefully addressed before irreparable damage is done to the person. One of the reoccurring horrors of American life is mass shootings. Every time these shootings happen, people ask the question — what can we do to stop this from happening ? Since gun control is off the table, why not require universal mental health checks for every American — particularly young men who are most prone to these crimes. If mental health is the problem, then we need a mental health solution. A mental health check up fits the bill.

A lot of people still believe old ideas about mental health. It is a personal weakness not a disease. They claim that people didn’t need mental health professionals in the good old days. People were stronger. They just toughed it out. None of which is true. There is absolutely no evidence that people were tougher or stronger in the good old days. First, nobody measured it in the good old days so there is no way to prove this assertion. Also families hid away their problem members if they could so Grandmother never talked about crazy Aunt Alice. There is no better example of the widespread addiction problem in the USA in the good old days than Prohibition. The level of alcoholism was so bad that Americans actually banned alcohol consumption. The good old days weren’t so free from mental health diseases and addiction.

The good old days were free from effective treatment of these disorders. And this is why it is time for Americans to move away from the shame model of mental illness and go to the proactive treatment of mental illness. Nobody wants to be sick from cancer, the same thing applies to mental health. Nobody wants it. It is a horrible experience. Once of the principal reasons that cancer survivability has dramatically improved in the last century is medical professionals are now monitoring their patients and catching it faster. Why not try the same approach with mental illness?