How to stop overusing mental health

The importance of mental health is a cause strongly promoted by everyone from the Princess of Wales to the leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer; Employers preach the gospel of welfare. The British were once encouraged to hide their feelings; now they are encouraged to seek support.

Much of the rich world is facing a growing problem of mental health problems, especially since the covid-19 pandemic. But the British figures are surprising. Around 4.5m Britons were in contact with mental health services in 2021-2222, an increase of almost 1m in five years. Over the past decade no other European country has seen a greater increase in the use of antidepressants.

A National Health Service (NHS) survey in 2023 found that one in five children aged 8 to 16 in England has a mental health problem, up from one in eight in 2017. 17 to 19 year olds in that number. it had increased from one in ten to one in four. The number of unemployed people with mental health conditions has risen by a third between 2019 and 2023.

It’s good that people don’t feel they have to shut things down and the suffering caused by mental illness is real. Mental health awareness has reduced the stigma of the condition and revealed that many Britons’ needs are not being met. But awareness has taken its toll, too.

Despite their good intentions, awareness campaigns cause some people to conflate common ways of dealing with mental health problems. Special treatment causes people to seek unnecessary diagnosis and treatment. The need to treat people with mild conditions competes with care for those with the most severe.

Start with the idea that mental health has become a catch-all term. A large number of people who say they have a problem is a red flag. About 57% of university students claim to have a mental health problem; More than a quarter of parents with school-age children sought help or advice about their child’s mental health in 2021-22.

Britons’ studies continue to describe sadness and depression as mental illnesses, which explains how illness is understood. Many conditions do not yet have objective biomarkers, so self-reported symptoms weigh heavily on official statistics and diagnostic systems.

People have tendencies to label mild forms of suffering as death. By 2022 more than a quarter of 16- and 18-year-olds in British schools were given extra time in formal exams because of a health condition. Evidence of a mental health problem can unlock aid payments. The certificate does not need to be from an NHS doctor: many private clinics are willing to provide it.

Firms may choose to attribute stress to the problem rather than deal with the consequences of admitting that working conditions are poor (the World Health Organization suggests that good management is the best way of protecting mental health at work). The highest rates of diagnosed depression occur among the poorest people in England, but perhaps the government prefers to prescribe anti-depressants instead of trying to tackle poverty .

Treating mild depression may not benefit patients. One study of mental health courses in 84 British schools found that mainstream education was good for mental health. But the greatest risk of overdiagnosis is for those who need help the most.

The NHS can, in theory, test patients on demand. In fact, the chronically understaffed and poorly organized service is struggling with increasing demand. The number of young people accessing mental health services has increased by more than three and a half times the number of staff in child and adolescent psychiatry. A 22% increase in mental health staff overall in the five years to 2021-2022 would not have been matched by a 44% increase in bookings for all patients. At least 1.8m people are waiting for mental health treatment.

Increased demand drives workers into the private sector. Nurses tired of dealing with the NHS’s most demanding cases can earn as much as £1,000 ($1,265) on a course that assesses stress disorders. The NHS has only 6% more psychiatrists than a decade ago, compared to 86% more emergency medicine consultants.

Police pick up some of the pieces – officers in England spend around 1m hours a year with mental health patients in accident and emergency departments – but that’s not treatment. Even as awareness of mental health conditions increases, outcomes for people with serious mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, continue to worsen; they die 15-20 years earlier than the rest of the population, a gap that was widening before covid-19 and was exacerbated by it.

Rethinking Britain’s approach to mental health requires a number of changes. More money should be invested in research so that individuals can be treated fairly; mental disorders absorb 9% of the health budget in England but 6% of medical research funding. The social causes of mental illness should also be given more attention. Earlier this year the government blocked a major initiative to look at the root causes of mental health problems, from poverty to isolation; that policy should be revived. More time and effort should be devoted to those most in need; changing the Mental Health Act, an outdated law that treats the mentally ill as criminals, would be a start.

Causes and effects

Above all, Britain needs to avoid mass treatment of milder forms of trauma. Putting people into an expanded health system has predictable consequences. All suffering should be taken seriously, but the diagnosis of this disease is not always in one’s best interests; one recent study found that volunteers were happier when they learned to suppress negative thoughts. Britain has become more sensitive about mental health. It requires more thought, too.