Exactly. It's scary to think that a simple screening could dictate how you are treated for the rest of your life effectively.

You're declared a "latent schizophrenic" and people start doubting your credibility, sanity, independence, safety etc. at every change or milestone in your life. You are forced into therapy for your "benefit", because you are preemptively declared "incompetent" because your illness could manifest any time.

You are given "maintenance" doses of major tranquilizers and a cocktail of other poorly understood psychiatric drugs to balance the side effects out; and any spirituality, any epiphanies or sudden changes, any minute delusion is blown out of proportion and is put under a microscope.

This name-calling/magnification of "bad behavior" could happen to anybody, and does every day regardless of such screenings and tests. These psychological disorders are poorly understood, with flimsy and often biased/subjective diagnostic criteria (with no measurable physical damage, only a checklist - even in schizophrenia; those bunk brain scans of people who have been treated long-term with anti-psychotics are evidence of just that - it's not the natural progression of the disease).

"Wellness checks" are one way today where people can effectively send anybody to a mental hospital with no due process. Some states require that you be a threat to yourself or others, which is something that is easy to fabricate/exaggerate if you wish a person harm, or perhaps misunderstand a situation or are misguided and think you know better than the person that you want to "help".

In my state though, if there is "clear and convincing evidence that somebody needs treatment and would benefit from it" during such a check, it basically gives them the right to involuntarily commit you.

Imagine how devastating that could be to somebody who cannot afford to pay for the treatment/duration of stay, even if they were deemed subjectively to need treatment. It's highway robbery how much they charge. And their entire life could be upended in the 3 days they held them, if they did get out in only 3 days. They could lose their job, and it all cascades from there.

Instead of worrying how bad reality can get, or is, we really just need to attack the problem at its core:

Health care needs to be health care, not whatever the hell capitalism has twisted it to be.

Involuntary treatment should be made illegal, and there should be a much higher bar on what criteria makes somebody incompetent. One psychiatrist and a judge who is wooed by that psychiatrist is not enough. You should be able to direct your care to another psychiatrist or facility if you have any problem whatsoever, but that usually doesn't happen. There are courts specifically called "Mental Health Courts" in the US and I can tell you that "second opinions" and even small changes to your treatment can be hell to fight for.

And finally, suicide should be legal. There should be humane, detailed processes for it, and it should be done in a medical setting. If suicide were legal, then a lot of these frivolous interventions would become regulated. People shouldn't have an express ticket to the mental prison whenever they express wanting to die.