A personal visit to the online couch

OK, so how did you spend your Saturday night?

Well, unlike a lot of my fellow students at Chico State University, a campus which is notorious for its partying, my friends and I spent one precious weekend evening with our eyes glued to the monitor of my computer. And we discovered something about ourselves that we had been wondering for probably most of our lives.

We're not crazy after all.

Crammed in a corner of my small apartment where my computer rests, the four of us spent three hours with Internet Mental Health, a site that has all the answers to any kind of problem you've ever heard of.

We took tests for problems ranging from Attention Deficit Disorder to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. And what we thought was going to be a boring evening turned into one of enjoyment.

"Who reads these disclaimers anyway?" Scott exclaimed scrolling down the page to click the "I agree" box and then entering his age, sex and that he was doing a patient self-exam.

Then came the test.

"In your lifetime, for at least one month (off and on) did you ever believe that everywhere you went strangers were spying on you or knew secrets about you? Or someone was trying to harm, poison or kill you, yet other people found this hard to believe?" one question from the schizophrenia test asked.

He clicked the "no" box and went on to the next question. After about three or four questions with "no" answers, a box popped up saying the test was over and to proceed to the diagnosis. The results found him not schizo. What a relief!

Then we went back to the same test and starting answering "yes" to all the questions, wondering what we would have to do if we were diagnosed schizophrenic. But time after time, our results came back negative.

That's strange, we thought.

So we took other tests, answering yes to questions and trying to be diagnosed for a specific disorder. And still nothing. Not one diagnosis saying "You're crazy! Seek mental health right away!" Only one time did we get an "uncertainty" for a diagnosis.

And we began wondering how great these tests really are if they never actually say "Go seek help."

We came to the conclusion that these tests are a bad idea, especially for someone who isn't mentally well anyway and their results come back "uncertain."

"Uncertain doesn't tell a person anything," my friend Robin said. "It only raises more questions."

Still, the evening wasn't a total loss. When we did answer the questions truthfully, we learned a lot about each other we never knew before, while getting to know each other a little better.

We learned that maybe we are all a little crazy.