The "Crazy" Question

Usually this wouldn't bother me and I hear it so often, but I happened to be late on my medication tonight so this particular instance finally set something off in my head.

I work as a phlebotomist/lab assistant at a major hospital. I go around and collect blood orders from patients on all the inpatient units. It's not unusual for me to come in to draw on patients who are doing the screening questions asked at the beginning of every admission.

One of them, perhaps a life-saving one, is deemed as the "strange" or "crazy" question.

'Have you had any recent thoughts of harming yourself or others?'

I've heard so many admitting nurses preface this question with "I know this is weird/crazy/strange but we have to ask everyone who comes in.." For someone like myself with Major Depressive Disorder who has struggled with it their whole life and whose lab coat hides 6 prominent self-harm scars, it irks me any time I hear nurses refer to it as the 'crazy' question. Why not just preface it with 'we have to ask everyone who comes in' and leave it at that? Why continue to pursue the negative stigma attached to mental illness, self-harm, and suicide when you're supposed to be a professional who helps people regardless of what ailment they come into the hospital with?

Someone who has a history of self-harming or who is afraid of their Depression now has a reason to say no. Saying 'no' could be putting them in harm's way. Teaching people that even nursing professionals think they're "crazy" or "broken" or "weird" because they have these torturous thoughts.

It just really happened to bother me tonight.