The Importance of Routine Mental Health Checks:A civilizational, ethical, integrative, and scientific proposal.

By Livy-Elcon Emereonye

If the saying holds that an injury to one is an injury to all, then no ‘same person’ ought to deride the mentally challenged!

Mental health remains the most neglected pillar of global healthcare, despite overwhelming evidence linking psychological well-being to physical health, social stability, and economic productivity. This article presents a contentious yet scientific case for the establishment of regular psychiatric testing, viewed through the perspectives of both integrative and traditional medicine. Drawing from psychiatry, neuroscience, public health, ethics, and African traditional healing systems, it argues that routine mental health screening is essential not only for early detection of pathology but also for preserving psychological balance, cultural continuity, and holistic well-being. Routine psychiatric assessments act as a bridge connecting modern biomedicine with traditional preventive practices.

However, there exists a global hypocrisy surrounding ‘holistic health.’

Modern medicine claims allegiance to holistic care, yet practices selective attention. Blood pressure, glucose, and lipid profiles are routinely checked, while the mind—the architect of perception, judgment, emotion, and behaviour—is ignored until dysfunction erupts.

This contradiction is not merely clinical; it is philosophical. Mental illness is still framed as aberration or moral failure rather than a dynamic imbalance involving neurobiology, environment, culture, and meaning (Corrigan & Watson, 2002). The result is a healthcare system that privileges crisis intervention over preventive equilibrium.

Routine psychiatric testing is therefore not an innovation—it is a return to balance, aligning modern medicine with ancient healing philosophies that understood the mind as central to health.

Nonetheless, mental health serves as a fundamental factor in determining physical health.

Biomedical science has decisively dismantled the mind–body dualism. Chronic psychological stress activates the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, elevates cortisol, disrupts immune regulation, and accelerates cardiovascular and metabolic diseases (Cohen et al., 2007; McEwen, 2017).

Traditional medical systems recognized this centuries ago. In African Traditional Medicine (ATM), illness is viewed as a disturbance of harmony between the individual, community, ancestors, and environment. Emotional disequilibrium is not peripheral—it is causal. Modern psychoneuroimmunology now confirms what traditional systems long practiced: the mind governs systemic health.

Ignoring routine mental assessment while treating physical disease is therefore scientifically obsolete and culturally amnesic.

Early detection serves as the meeting point for psychiatry and time-honored preventive wisdom.

Psychiatric disorders evolve gradually, manifesting first as sleep disturbance, emotional volatility, loss of motivation, or cognitive fatigue. Without routine screening, these signs are trivialized or moralized.

Validated tools such as the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 allow early detection and intervention, improving outcomes and reducing chronicity (Kroenke et al., 2001; Spitzer et al., 2006). This mirrors traditional healing practices where early signs of mental or spiritual imbalance prompt preventive rituals, counseling, herbal interventions, or communal support.

Routine psychiatric testing thus represents a scientific formalization of traditional preventive wisdom, not its negation.

One should not underestimate the impact of stigma, culture, and the function of integrative framing.

Stigma thrives where mental illness is framed as abnormality. In many African societies, psychological distress is either spiritualized excessively or hidden to avoid social labeling. Ironically, this secrecy worsens outcomes.

Integrative mental health care—combining biomedical screening with culturally sensitive interpretation—reduces stigma by:

• Normalizing mental assessment
• Respecting indigenous explanatory models
• Encouraging early help-seeking

Evidence shows that culturally grounded mental health approaches improve engagement and outcomes (Patel et al., 2018). Routine psychiatric testing, when culturally framed, becomes an instrument of liberation rather than labeling.

Integrative psychiatry goes beyond just suppressing symptoms.

Conventional psychiatry has been criticized for reductionism and over-reliance on pharmacotherapy. Integrative psychiatry responds by combining:

• Standard psychiatric screening
• Psychotherapy and lifestyle medicine
• Herbal and nutraceutical support
• Mind–body interventions
• Cultural and spiritual context

Herbal psychotropics such as Withania somnifera, Bacopa monnieri, Ginkgo biloba, and African botanicals used traditionally for calming, cognition, and mood regulation are increasingly supported by scientific evidence (Sarris et al., 2011).

Routine psychiatric testing provides the diagnostic clarity necessary to deploy integrative interventions rationally and safely, rather than indiscriminately.

Does a relationship exist between high-risk groups and traditional preventive ethics?

Adolescents, pregnant women, elders, and patients with chronic illness have always been recognized in traditional societies as requiring special psychological care. Elders were counseled, postpartum women protected, and youths guided through rites of passage.

Modern ethics echoes this wisdom. Preventive psychiatric screening aligns with beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, and respect for autonomy (Beauchamp & Childress, 2019). To ignore these populations until breakdown occurs is both unethical and culturally regressive.

Mental Health, Social Stability, and Indigenous Communal Philosophy – The Way Forward

In African philosophy, the individual exists within the community. Psychological breakdown therefore has communal consequences—violence, addiction, social fragmentation.

Routine psychiatric testing is not merely clinical; it is a tool of social preservation. It enables early identification of distress before it manifests as antisocial behavior. Traditional systems understood this intuitively; modern public health confirms it empirically.

A society that invests in prisons while neglecting preventive mental health care misunderstands both human nature and justice.

There is a place where scientific validity meets Traditional Insight

Psychiatric screening tools such as PHQ-9, GAD-7, AUDIT, MMSE, and MoCA are validated, brief, and adaptable across cultures (Babor et al., 2001; Spitzer et al., 2006). When combined with culturally informed clinical interviews and traditional insight, they provide a complete diagnostic picture.

Integrative practice does not reject science; it contextualizes it.

Mental health should be recognized as both a human right and a cultural responsibility, deserving of its rightful place.

The United Nations affirms mental health as a fundamental human right (UN, 2019). In African moral philosophy, care for the mind is also a cultural duty—to the self, the family, and the community.

Neglecting routine psychiatric testing is therefore both a human rights failure and a cultural abdication.

Toward Preventive and Integrative Civilization, Education Is at the Centre.

Routine psychiatric testing is not Western imposition, medical imperialism, or diagnostic excess. It is the convergence of modern science and ancient wisdom—a return to preventive balance.

A civilization that routinely assesses mental well-being:

• Protects physical health
• Preserves social order
• Honours cultural wisdom
• Upholds human dignity

To routinely test the mind is to protect the body, stabilize society, and remember who we are.

References

Babor, T. F., Higgins-Biddle, J. C., Saunders, J. B., & Monteiro, M. G. (2001). AUDIT: The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test. WHO.

Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Cohen, S., Janicki-Deverts, D., & Miller, G. E. (2007). Psychological stress and disease. JAMA, 298(14), 1685–1687.

Corrigan, P. W., & Watson, A. C. (2002). Understanding stigma. World Psychiatry, 1(1), 16–20.

Kroenke, K., Spitzer, R. L., & Williams, J. B. (2001). The PHQ-9. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 16(9), 606–613.

McEwen, B. S. (2017). Neurobiological effects of chronic stress. Chronic Stress, 1, 1–11.

Patel, V., Saxena, S., Lund, C., et al. (2018). Global mental health. The Lancet, 392(10157), 1553–1598.

Sarris, J., Moylan, S., Camfield, D. A., et al. (2011). Complementary medicine in psychiatry. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2011, 1–21.

Spitzer, R. L., Kroenke, K., Williams, J. B., & Löwe, B. (2006). GAD-7. Archives of Internal Medicine, 166(10), 1092–1097.

United Nations. (2019). Mental health and human rights. OHCHR.

World Health Organization. (2017). Depression and other common mental disorders. WHO.

World Health Organization. (2022). Mental health: Strengthening our response. WHO.