Raising mental health awareness not beneficial when NHS can’t cope already, board member suggests

Professor says campaign is unnecessary as younger generations are ‘dramatically more likely’ to talk about their woes than those before them

The NHS should not keep increasing mental health awareness because it cannot cope with current levels of demand, one of its board members has said.
Prof Sir Simon Wessely, a non-executive NHS England director, argued growing levels of awareness are now likely to be less “beneficial” than they were in previous decades.
Sir Simon, who was president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists between 2014 and 2017, noted poor mental health is now often linked to personal and societal problems, rather than neurological conditions.
A survey carried out earlier this month found almost a quarter of Gen Z – those born after 1997 – say they have long-term mental health conditions, compared with an average of eight per cent of all adults.
Reflecting on his presidency during a conversation on Times Radio, Sir Simon said: “I went to every medical school, spoke to 40 different groups of students. And invariably they reported much higher rates of poor mental wellbeing and mental health problems.
“But actually, when you push them a bit, they weren’t talking about the kind of disorders that we’re talking about – depression, anxiety, and so on.
“They were talking about loneliness, homesickness, exam stress, academic pressure, concerns about climate change, which we probably wouldn’t really classify as mental disorders because they don’t really respond to the kind of psychological treatments we give.”
Sir Simon called on the health service to “confront” the fact younger generations are “dramatically more likely” to talk about mental health than those before them.
“This is also driving up demand, which in fact the NHS is not set up to meet,” he said.
“Therefore, continuing mental health awareness may not be [as] beneficial as it was 10, 20, 30 years ago.”
Sir Simon has warned in the past about the dangers of “over professionalising or medicalising” conditions that are “not really the business of doctors and GPs”.
Depression and anxiety diagnoses have risen sharply since 2000 and particularly since 2010, while ADHD and autism referrals have risen fivefold since the pandemic.
This has prompted fears doctors could be over diagnosing the conditions, with Sir Simon describing the increase in cases as “remarkable”.
He also said social media is “not the only element” behind Britain’s deteriorating mental health.
“We have the well-known things, which are probably still more important – bullying, physical abuse, sexual abuse, austerity, difficulty in employment, and so on.
“And then other new ones, more difficulties for young women in transition to adulthood, climate change worries and things like that. It’s very unlikely to be one cause.
“Ironically, the way we’re going to perhaps help these and move forward in these areas is itself now going to be social media, because there’s no way we can ever produce sufficient psychiatrists, counsellors, psychologists, whatever you want to call them to touch this problem.”
In conversation with Ian Russell – the father of Molly Russell who has campaigned for suicide prevention and internet safety after his daughter took her life aged 14 – Sir Simon said social media would ultimately prove both a “force for good” and a “terrible tragedy”.
Mr Russell said tech giants should have an “overarching duty of care” after the spread of false information online was blamed for disorder on Britain’s streets earlier this month.
He argued social media sites had been designed to make a profit, rather than deliberately to be unsafe, but added: “If those platforms are being used in an unsafe way, and the platforms discover it, the platform shouldn’t just sit on that quietly.
“They should put their hands up and say, oh, we found this out, we should do something about it.”
Turning to mental health, Mr Russell accepted there was no “easy solution” but called for “early intervention” when possible to encourage people to seek help early.