A simple blood test could detect mental illness. I know one company has an 80% accurate blood test for sz but that's a little too inaccurate for me. So I just read about this one they are working on for depression and this one actually measures the serotonin transport activity which is actually involved in the illness rather than the random markers in the sz test so it might be more accurate...however there are likely other factors as well.

http://www.meduniwien.ac.at/homepage/1/news-and-topstories/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=4739&cHash=7dc8464850e28387b1f1df64426b8637

But just imagined you're in for a routine cholesterol screen etc and the doc pulls up your results as positive and instead of all this complex interaction we have with pdocs and labeling of things like depression he/she says oh looks like your serotonin transport activity is a little off..we've got a med that will fix that right up. No judgment a simple biochemical test and it's correction. If you were depressed and your sert wasn't off then no need for meds as it wasn't a chemical imbalance but might benefit instead from therapy or something.

I wonder if this is the world pdocs thought they were getting into when all the meds started up...a world with specifically targeted meds for people who actually had a biochemical basis to their illness...I wonder if that's what they want to believe they are doing now despite the fact that they have no idea what causes any one person to get sick...

But I think it would be great if we knew from day one who would benefit and who would not so there wouldn't be this odd sense among the general public that forcing people to take meds that might be ineffective for them would solve all the worlds problems.