Prescribing measures: Unintended negative consequences of mandating standardized mental health measurement

In July 2020, two of the largest funders of mental health research worldwide — the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Wellcome Trust — announced plans to standardize mental health measurement. Specifically, obtaining funding for research related to depression and anxiety will be conditional on using four specific measures.While we agree that there are obvious benefits to standardizing mental health measurement, some of which are discussed in the announcement by NIMH and Wellcome, in this paper we focus on potential unintended negative consequences of this initiative, and lay out recommendations for how some of these might be mitigated.