How to stop over-medicalising mental health
competes with care for those who have the most severe ones. Start with the idea that mental health has become a catch-all term. The sheer proportions of people who say they have a disorder is a red flag.
Some 57% of university students claim to suffer from a mental-health issue; over three-quarters of parents with school-age children sought help or advice over their child’s mental health in 2021-22. In surveys Britons increasingly describe grief and stress as mental illnesses, redefining how sickness is understood. Most conditions do not yet have objective biomarkers, so self-reported symptoms weigh heavily in official statistics and in diagnostic processes.
People have incentives to label mild forms of distress as a disorder. In 2022 more than a quarter of 16- and 18-year-olds in British schools were given extra time in official exams because of a health condition. Evidence of a mental-health problem can unlock welfare payments.
Certification need not come from an NHS doctor: plenty of private clinics stand ready to provide it. Firms may prefer to label stress a disorder rather than deal with the consequences of acknowledging that working conditions are poor (the World Health Organisation implies that good management is the best way to protect mental health in the workplace). The highest rates of diagnosed depression occur among England’s poorest people, but the government probably prefers prescribing antidepressants to trying to solve poverty.
Medicalising mild distress may not benefit patients. One study of mindfulness courses in 84 British schools found that normal teaching was just as good for mental health. But the great harm from overdiagnosis is to those who most need help.
Read more on livemint.com
