Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said doctors are “overdiagnosing” mental health conditions.
Asked whether he thought this was a problem, he said: “I want to follow the evidence and I agree with that point about overdiagnosis.”
Responding to Mr Streeting’s comments, mental health charity Mind said it was important to be “extremely careful” with the language around mental health diagnoses to avoid “stigmatising”.
“Here’s the other thing, mental wellbeing, illness, it’s a spectrum and I think definitely there’s an overdiagnosis but there’s too many people being written off and, to your point about treatment, too many people who just aren’t getting the support they need,” he told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg.
“So, if you can get that support to people much earlier, then you can help people to either stay in work or get back to work.”
Mr Streeting said the Government is recruiting 8,500 more mental health staff to get waiting lists down.
Minesh Patel, associate director of policy and campaigns at Mind, said: “The Secretary of State is absolutely right that not enough people are getting the support they need.
“For years, mental health waiting lists have been a major problem, what we need now is a clear plan from this Government on how they intend to tackle them.
“Applying for benefits is not an easy process.
“People with a mental health problem must go through a lengthy and arduous assessment process, with decisions to not award support often overturned at appeal stage.
“We must also be extremely careful with the language around mental health diagnoses, which risks creating a climate of stigmatising people’s real experiences and undermining the opinions of medical professionals.
“Whilst more needs to be done to equip people with the tools and knowledge to look after their mental health, we must remember we have experienced a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic and cost-of-living crisis.
“We have deep problems of poverty, low-paid and insecure work and systemic racism in this country. And we have mental health services that are at breaking point.”