‘What I see in clinic is never a set of labels’: are we in danger of overdiagnosing mental illness? (Gavin Francis, 10 Feb 2026, The Guardian)
Research tells us that the human brain hasn’t changed much in the past 300,000 years, and mental suffering has surely been with us for as long as we have experienced mental life. We are all vessels for thoughts, feelings and desires that wash through our minds, influencing our mental state. Some patterns of feeling are recognisable across the millennia, but the labels we use to make sense of the mind and of mental health are always changing – which means there’s always scope to change them for the better.
The subject is important, because according to modern psychiatric definitions, the 21st century is seeing an epidemic of mental illness. The line between health and ill-health of the mind has never been more blurred. A survey in 2019 found that two-thirds of young people in the UK felt they have had a mental disorder. We are broadening the criteria for what counts as illness at the same time as lowering the thresholds for diagnosis. This is not a bad thing if it helps us feel better, but evidence is gathering that as a society it may be making us feel worse.
We have developed a tendency to categorise mild to moderate mental and emotional distress as a necessarily clinical problem rather than an integral part of being human – a tendency that is new in our own culture, and not widely shared with others. Psychiatrists who work across different cultures point out that, in many non-western societies, low mood, anxiety and delusional states are seen more as spiritual, relational or religious problems – not psychiatric ones. By making sense of states of mind through terms that are embedded in community and tradition, they may even have more success at incorporating our crises of mind into the stories of our lives.
Pretend illness beats personal responsibility.