GPs have said they feel “under pressure” to overdiagnose mental health issues like depression, ADHD and autism.
Life can be tough. Heartbreak and grief are painful yet normal experiences, and we need to learn to cope without misinterpreting ordinary distress as something pathological. This was a common sentiment expressed in England in a survey sent by BBC News to more than 5,000 GPs. One remarked: “Life being stressful is not an illness.”
We live in a society where one in five adults reports having a common mental health condition, like anxiety or depression, according to NHS data. Rates are higher in young people – for 16-24 year olds, it’s one in four.
But more than half of 752 GPs who responded to a BBC survey said they were concerned that mental health conditions were being overdiagnosed. A smaller fraction said they think under-diagnosis is the real issue.
One GP said that giving people labels such as anxiety or depression “over-medicalises life and emotional difficulties”, and that this was taking resources away from people with severe needs.
Another remarked that young adults “seem to be less resilient since Covid” and are more concerned with getting a diagnosis than finding practical coping strategies.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting ordered an independent review into rising demand for mental health, ADHD and autism services in England on Thursday.
But he backtracked on his claims that there was an “overdiagnosis” of mental health problems, saying he now realised his past comments had “failed to capture the complexity” of the problem.
His Guardian article was headlined: “I realise now that my view on mental health overdiagnosis was divisive. We all need better evidence.”
He wrote: “Whether this is because people are more open about their mental health, there is growing awareness of these conditions, these are consequences of the pandemic or there have been other drivers, we have got to get to the bottom of the causes of this.”
This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
