Every person should be given a free mandatory psychological evaluation once a year

I'm not sure if you are genuinely this trusting of institutions, but weaponized psychology has been a tool of oppression for the field's entire existence; lobotomizing anyone deemed "degenerate". Feminists were deemed insane. Women who reported domestic abuse were deemed insane. Homosexuality was in the DSM-4, and there are STILL gay conversion programs running now in the USA and other countries. "Gender dysphoria" is a condition in the DSM-5.

Also consider: if the government is mandating the evaluation, they can easily weaponize it to stifle dissent. Any "safeguards" against that type of behavior would ultimately collapse the moment the government just decides it doesn't want to follow said restrictions. What would that look like now in the USA? Is opposing the PotUS a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome. In the UK, is opposition to the Digital ID system of excessive paranoia? of "histrionic personality disorder"?

Just hear from experiences of people who were exploited by hospitals and other psychological institutions, including in the USA of a few years ago. These peoples lives were destroyed under the guise of acting "for your safety". You're talking about mass-imprisonment and drugging of people who have not even committed a crime.

...And the worst part is, I'm not even sure this is an unpopular opinion. The widespread adoption of "Mental Health Holds" in recent decades is proof that many lawmakers support these policies. I've seen it in the USA, and heard testimonies from the UK and China of the same problem. The President of the United States directly built off this mentality with his executive order Ending Crime And Disorder On America’s Streets. California, which is as far opposite from the current President as you can go, recently created a parallel institution for this purpose with its "CARE Courts".

Every person should be given a free psychological evaluation once a year

Oh great.

Every person should be given a free mandatory psychological evaluation once a year

Oh no.

Surely, that wouldn’t be abused.

That's crazy talk, off to the camps for you.

Why not just free psychological assistance? I don't think like a forced test is a good way to fix issues. It's not like the psychologist comes, fixes your brain and then you're all good.

People need to want to improve their life, the psychologist assists in that process.

yeah totally like John Nash, James Taylor, Frances Farme, Vincent Van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowel, ........

People would lie and conceal anything abnormal. Its not magic and takes a lot of effort to actually evaluate them.

If I'm going to a psyc yearly I'm coming off as the most boring average person in the world. I'm not gonna sit down and lay out all my unhinged views (of which I have none because my views are all correct and hinged. Its others that are unhinged :p )

Four years ago, I managed to finally find a medical practice in my area that was accepting new patients. Earliest available appointment was 6 weeks away, so I scheduled it and then waited.

A couple nights before my check-up, something came up (maybe dog was sick that night) and I got next to no sleep that night. Still had to work the next day so I didn't get a chance to catch up on sleep, and then the following night something else happened (partner was having night terrors). Then I go in for my check-up the following day with a couple sleepless nights under my belt, which was not typical at all, feeling like complete poop, and they have me fill out a psychological questionnaire.

There were questions like "In the last 5 days, how many nights have you had trouble sleeping?" "Do you currently feel tired or irritable" "In the past 5 days have you had trouble staying awake during your normal daily activities" and many other that don't really take any real history or perfectly reasonable explanations about why the last 5 days were outliers.

Anyway, the outcome is that I was immediately labeled as high anxiety and depression risk based on that one assessment. And now four years later, every time I go to the primary care place, they push me to go get psychiatric testing and ask about my anxiety and depression.

Honestly it really felt like a real-life equivalent of the "Not-sure" scene from Idiocracy and I definitely don't want that having actual real world consequences on me.

On the other hand, I've seen numerous people even just here on Lemmy over the past few years who seem very likely to be mentally unwell and there's a part of me that thinks it would be nice if there was a way I could help them.

this is a good conversation topic

"Hide that problem I don't want to see!"

I really want every one in the world to be tested for nuerodivergence because it would be fucking funny as hell if we found out shit's actually reversed and nuerotypical people are the minority, and thus the ones who are actually divergent. Like how in Xmen the mutants out number the normies.

I used to be a Libertarian. But yet, here I am:

If we had a technocratic, non-partisan system that maximally respected individual variances while trying to focus on finding the people who most need emotional support, THEN

... I would totally be in favor of widespread periodic psychological profiling of schoolchildren , using the same sort of process that we do now for standardized academic testing.

No system is perfect and all systems will be abused. But with eg some local-level oversight boards I think it would be a huge net positive.