Integrated Screening for Mental and Metabolic Health Risks

Nor Ba’yah Abdul Kadir

Integrated Screening for Mental and Metabolic Health Risks

Author(s)	Dr. Nor Ba’yah Abdul Kadir
Country	United States
Abstract	Mental and metabolic health conditions frequently coexist, yet screening systems in primary and community care often assess psychological symptoms and cardiometabolic risk through separate clinical pathways. Such fragmentation may delay recognition of people who simultaneously experience depressive or anxiety symptoms and metabolic abnormalities such as central adiposity, elevated blood pressure, dysglycemia, or dyslipidemia. The present study develops a simulation-based framework for integrated mental–metabolic risk screening in adults attending community and primary-care services. The proposed model combines brief validated mental-health case-finding instruments with measurement of selected metabolic risk indicators, followed by stratified referral and coordinated follow-up. A hypothetical sample of 600 adults was modeled, with 300 participants assigned to an integrated screening pathway and 300 to a conventional separate or opportunistic screening pathway. Because no empirical patient-level dataset was supplied, all numerical outcomes are explicitly synthetic and serve only to demonstrate an evaluative methodology. The integrated pathway identified a larger simulated proportion of participants with mental-health risk, metabolic risk, and simultaneous mental–metabolic risk and achieved higher completion of indicated follow-up. Dual-risk identification reached 19% in the integrated pathway compared with 10% in the separate pathway, while follow-up completion was modeled at 68% and 44%, respectively. The proposed approach is supported by evidence demonstrating bidirectional associations between depression and diabetes, depression and metabolic syndrome, and depression and obesity, as well as prior evidence supporting integrated management of physical and mental conditions. The study concludes that integrated screening may improve early recognition of overlapping health risks when accompanied by clinical confirmation, patient-centered counseling, clear referral procedures, and adequate follow-up capacity. Screening should remain a case-finding process rather than being interpreted as definitive psychiatric or metabolic diagnosis.
Keywords	integrated screening; mental health; metabolic health; depression; anxiety; metabolic syndrome; diabetes risk; primary care; preventive health; multimorbidity
Field	Engineering
Published In	Volume 4, Issue 3, May-June 2023
Published On	2023-06-26

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American Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Innovation and Research

A Widely Indexed Open Access Peer Reviewed Multidisciplinary Bi-monthly Scholarly International Journal

Integrated Screening for Mental and Metabolic Health Risks

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