Late Thursday, Politics in Minnesota’s Sarah Janecek reported that the Star Tribune is surveying gubernatorial candidates about their mental health. Here’s the email, ascribed to reporter Pat Doyle, that Janecek republished:

Dear candidate for governor:

Following up on the recent published remarks by former Sen. Mark Dayton about his treatment for depression and alcohol abuse, the Star Tribune is asking each candidate for governor whether he or she has ever received therapy or treatment of any kind for use of alcohol or prescription or non-prescription drugs, or for depression or anxiety.

The response — or the absence of a response — will likely be used in a future news story. The newspaper requests that any response to this inquiry be made by Jan. 8.

Thank you.

Condemnation, at least journalistically, was swift. City Pages’ Kevin Hoffman pronounced it a “modern-day Inquisition.” On Twitter, MPR’s Bob Collins declared, “You know who’ll get my vote? The first candidate to stand up and say publicly, 'Screw you, Strib. It’s not of your business.'”

I checked with the Strib to see if the email was authentic; political editor Pat Lopez replied, “I appreciate your attempt to confirm, but I'm afraid I cannot discuss stories the Star Tribune may or may not be pursuing.”

So is the Strib nuts to pry like this? I’m afraid my feelings are more ambivalent than others’.

A big part of the reason is that I suffer from depression and anxiety disorder, and not the benign fatigue-is-the-only-symptom kind that Dayton described to the Strib’s Lori Sturdevant.

Although I have a wonderful, supportive family and am a reasonably productive member of society, depression is the struggle of my life, from the insomnia and obsessiveness that has me up at 4 a.m. chewing over this topic, to bouts of withdrawing from my family and the physical world. Trust me, if I were running for governor, I’d regard my depression and the resulting stress-triggered struggles as something the public should know.

By placing mental health questions off-limits, we’re leaving it up to the candidates to self-report (or be forced by rivals to self-report). If Paul Wellstone and Jim Ramstad are right about insurance parity for physical and mental illness, why should mental health questions be off limits if we wouldn’t bat an eye when candidates are asked for their traditional health histories?

Stigma, comes the instant reply. Voters would instantly disqualify someone who owned up to, say, being bipolar — even if most members of the public have no real idea of what being bipolar means. Another version: We'd never have elected Lincoln.

But this “You can’t handle the truth” limitation on questioning is dangerous for journalists to succumb to. Our job is to figure out what’s important, ask about it, provide necessary context, and let the chips fall where they may.

(Collins’ tweeted rejoinder? “I don't trust a horse-race-happy group of reporters to be educated enough about mental illness 2 provide context or enlightenment.”)

The fundamental question, of course, is whether mental health and substance abuse history is important. Should we know if a female hopeful suffered from post-partum depression? If a candidate received counseling for the loss of a family member? If someone successfully handled a drug problem three decades ago?

Although Minnesota's governor doesn't have nukes, journalists now regularly ask about mental health history as a regular part of presidential elections. In the wake of questions about his temperament and time as a POW, John McCain refused to release his mental health records. Barack Obama didn't either, though his physician issued a one-page letter stating, the candidate was "'in overall good physical and mental health needed to maintain the resiliency' required of presidents." That's probably a model if you're in the self-reporting-only camp.

To be fair: We don’t know how the Strib would edit the information they’re (probably) pursuing, assuming any candidate actually gives it to them. And they may be trying to level the stigma field amid horribly over-broad and under-substantiated allegations that some Dayton rival shopped the initial allegations — resulting in a lousy Dec. 29 Strib story, by the way.

This latest inquiry is also a botch. Why the strange limitation to depression and anxiety? Why not, say, paranoid schizophrenia? And why only conditions for which candidates have “ever received therapy or treatment?” The message there is, “Stay untreated, and you’re good to go, governor.”

One of the best arguments against what the Strib is doing is that mental health prying is a poor proxy for what really matters: the candidates’ actual actions. After all, unlike me, all have long records of public service. There are dozens if not hundreds of people who have worked with, or for, each of the hopefuls. A diligent reporter should probe their actual behavior, not some condition that may — or may not — explain how they operate.

I can’t say we’ve been oversupplied with such profiles, or issue-focused pieces, with the field-whittling precinct caucuses just 25 days away. It’s certainly easier to send out a survey.