Today (Sunday 16 March) on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, made a comment agreeing there is currently an overdiagnosis of mental health problems.
Responding to the comments, Alexa Knight, Director of England at the Mental Health Foundation, said:
“It's true that far too many people with mental health problems have been written off by a system that’s not well suited to helping them get better and back into work. But it would be wrong to attribute all of the rise in poor mental health to over-diagnosis of mental health problems. Instead, we should be looking at its root causes and how we tackle them, preventing people from developing poor mental health.
“The rising number of people experiencing mental health problems is the outcome of a decade of austerity, a generation defining pandemic, and a brutal cost of living crisis, throughout all of which people at risk weren’t given the support they needed. Many of the building blocks of good mental health, like housing, a good income and community have been eroded in recent years – is it any wonder people are struggling?
“The solution now is not to stigmatise or minimise the experiences of people who are experiencing mental health problems. Instead, the UK government needs to recognise the deep mental health crisis we face and be honest about how we got to this point. We need funding and evidence-led initiatives to tackle it, starting with the publication of the promised cross-government mental health plan as a roadmap for how we get out of this situation."