Measuring methods are discriminatory and “ethically dubious”

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http://www.cchr.org/doctors/eng/page12.htm

 

Measuring methods are discriminatory and " ethically dubious "

 

 

With the 1990s development of the Composite International Diagnostic

Interview (CIDI) by the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

and Dr. Norman Sartorius of the World Health Organization (WHO), whole

national populations were surveyed in order to determine and compare

types and levels of so called mental disability, as part of an overall

survey to determine the Global Burden of Disease.

 

Lacking any truly scientific system of measuring mental phenomena,

psychiatric sources yet artfully reported that five out of the ten

leading causes of disability worldwide are mental problems. Major

depression was similarly ranked fifth in the ten leading causes of the

global disease burden.

 

Gavin Mooney from the Dept. of Public Health and Community Medicine,

at the University of Sydney says that the measurement for the global

burden of disease is " questionable " as to whether it is the " best

measure of health status available. "

 

Trude Arnesen and Erik Nord, researchers from the National Institute

of Public Health in Norway, published an article in the British

Medical Journal on 27 November 1999, critical of the measuring

instrument used for ascertaining the overall " global burden of

disease. " " A valuation of human beings according to their functional

capacity is in sharp contrast to the humanistic values laid down in

the Declaration of Human Rights: `recognition of the inherent dignity

and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human

family is the foundation,' " the authors add.

 

In July 2001, Carl Hampus Lyttkens from the Institute of Economics,

Lund University, Sweden and Lund University Centre for Health

Economics, says that the measuring method used is " ethically dubious "

and " does not provide us with what it purports to do (a measure of

population health).... "

 

Lacking a scientific method of measuring mental disability (these

equations only appear scientific), psychiatric sources still continue

to report alarming levels of mental illness from all corners of the globe.