Most GPs say everyday stress is mislabelled as mental illness
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/most-gps-say-everyday-stress-is-mislabelled-as-mental-illness-rm0mst0pv
by boycecodd
Most GPs say everyday stress is mislabelled as mental illness
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/most-gps-say-everyday-stress-is-mislabelled-as-mental-illness-rm0mst0pv
by boycecodd
36 comments
wtf do GPs know about mental health? Plus it’s behind a paywall, so not gonna pay for the displeasure of reading that nonsense.
Whilst I agree that I think there are some people who say that they’re depressed when they have just had a bad day/week, etc, at the same time I don’t think GP’s are actually qualified in this area to actually give a respected opinion on this topic.
It’s not their area of expertise.
So why are they prescribing meds to folk they believe not to be suffering from an illness ?
I half agree, just depends what the stress is and how or what can be done to resolve the stress. As the title states ‘everyday stress’, more of an emphasis on ‘everyday’, eventually the mind and body would form a non medicated way to cope.
Can’t read this but I think my stress was mislabelled as a mental illness that needed pills.
Turned out my job was just horrible. I didn’t need antidepressants, I needed a different environment.
It wasn’t a case of me being dramatic. Being in that environment every day made me feel worse than when actual horrible occasions have happened in my life (family loss, etc).
There are a lot of people who claim they have a mh disorder but are just experiencing human emotion there is a distinct difference
This also happens with autism and adhd
It feeds into long waiting lists and detracts from people that need specialised support
There is a lot of this going on. Not for everyone, but a lot.
4/5 GPs think GPs overprescribe for mental health? So are they admitting that they themselves are poor practitioners, or is this one of those polls like “80% of drivers think other drivers are terrible at driving” that mostly just reveal the narcissism of the respondents?
Like “well of course the people *I* prescribe to genuinely require it, but I bet all my *lazy colleagues* are handing out pills like chocolates at Christmas”
So if this is the case why are people getting depression put on their notes with pills given to fight depression. Hmm.
We are definitely mislabeling getting sad about something as “mental health”. Getting sad is perfectly natural.
Avoiding any situation that might make you unhappy to preserve your mental health is actually mental.
Yeah the false positive rate for depression and anxiety is probably higher than we would like
I do a bit about well-being with my students and the best analogy to explain this is ‘you can be unfit without being ill’- poor mental health like anxiety, stress etc are like being unfit, they make your life harder and possibly more miserable…but they might not be an illness (though obviously they can lead to them)
One issue is just we were lazy with language you can be depressed without having Depression, you can be anxious without having Anxiety…we should’ve really just invented new words rather than taking existing ones for universal feelings and naming Clinical illnesses the same thing
Nick Haslam and many others have also highlighted issues like this as ‘concept creep’ where terms like mental health/illness, trauma, abuse etc have broadened over time which has diluted the originals severity and raises the severity of things which wouldn’t have fit (also see things like ‘the blue dot effect’)
At last, something almost everyone over thirty have always known. Stress and anxiety are part of everyday life and not illness. Mental health is also something you can’t self-diagnose, self-diagnosis is no diagnosis, all the people claiming to have mental health issues just lessen the seriousness for those that actually do.
Personally I blame the pandemic, that seems to be the point when all this mental health nonsense kicked off.
Now tomorrow is Monday, you may not fancy going to work or school, that’s not a mental health issue that’s life and something we all have to do. Perhaps you’ve got a job interview or the dentist tomorrow, you may be feeling anxious about that, that’s also perfectly normal and not a mental health issue.
I’ll say after 12 years of trying to get help with mental health issues and only getting a diagnosis after going through my teen years borderline suicidal and horribly anxious, the inverse seems to happen very frequently too.
Jobs. Home life. Coming out of school. Nothing changed it. But I got told it was hormones and all sorts of shit for years.
I feel that people are increasingly struggling to take responsibility for their well being. We’re becoming more disconnected, isolated, stressed and as a result more ill; however the fix for this is often lifestyle and behavioural changes rather than a need for therapy or medication.
I see this in schools too. Typical teenage experiences, like friendship breakdowns, causing feelings of depression/anxiety, but being labelled (esp by parents) as actual MH issues. Then the effected pupils get special passes, coddled and reassured, without building up their resilience. This snowballs into seeking GP diagnoses, especially once the pupils are in exam years as they want private rooms – they become used to special treatment
When I worked in a care home as a nurse I had to take prn anxiety meds . I couldn’t cope without . I feel like maybe it’s a mix of things . I still get anxiety now , but 99% of my shifts its okay without the meds , I still have them in my bag for a emergency and have used them once since . Where as when I worked in the care home I used to take them everyday . I feel like the condition is always there for me I’m just in a healthy environment currently for it.
I think I’d get in a lot of trouble by saying that the UK is so fucked that a lot of people are rightly deeply mentally unwell. You shouldn’t come out of some of the situations I’ve seen without it having serious impact on your mental health. The problem is that the way the UK expects to deal with stress is awful. A doctor can at best give you some pills which all have weird side effects and refer you for talk therapy which has a ridiculous waiting list.
You can’t say “the reason your depressed is because you have no money, a miserable job and no friend or foreseeable way to make friends and most of that is so far beyond your control that I honestly understand why you chose to overdose on whatever you could find”.
The use of ‘mental health’ in language has broadened so much now that people that are simply unhappy about something now describe it as an issue of mental health.
I do think this is unhelpful for people with genuine mental health challenges.
And now its normal to pathologise other peoples behaviour so that someone who acted in a way you don’t like can only apparently be explained through terms like narccism or psychosis
To whom do they say this? 🤔 Not their patients as they spend most of their lives hiding from them.
Have employers considered making jobs less shit? Has the government tried making an effort to make society less shit?
Sadly (for me) I do have clinical depression and anxiety and I’ll be on antidepressants for life.
Our grandparents used to go to church or consult with a priest in moments of great desperation. Most people in this country don’t, most are completely removed from any local culture – they go to a doctor because who else to turn to?
Idk, I guess I’m just speaking for myself really, but it makes sense to me…
I mean yeah state the obvious to some extent right? I thought a big part of depression with a-lot of people is getting hung up on how their day to day lifestyle is with all these small everyday stressors building up on them leaving them burnt out. I get the whole mislabeling it concept but it’s up to them where to draw the line right?
These posts are getting too vague anyway like state the obvious daily stressors can contribute to depression just draw the line at some point.
GP say everyday stressed is mislabelled.
Employers say mental illness is mislabelled as stress.
I mean, GPs are guilty of it too.
My mum went bankrupt, her brother died, she lost her job and her 4 dogs all died – all this within the space of 12 months.
Was speaking to her doctor about low mood and first thing he recommends is medication. Like, Doc, she’s quite rightly stressed the fuck out from a series of shitty life events – she’s allowed to have some low mood, Jesus…
Surely being stressed everyday isn’t healthy though?
I wonder who are they saying it to. Certainly not too their patients, as they don’t see them.
Welcome to capitalism. Alienation.
Rational responses to an economic system that demands constant productivity, undermines community, and erodes work-life balance. People perform rote tasks they have no say in and never get to see the end result of their labour, often doing it for wages that barely sustain them. Markets replace genuine social bonds with transactional relationships. Personal fulfillment is sacrificed utterly, totally taking the backseat to mere survival, causing extreme existential distress.
“Mental Illness” depoliticises it all and shifts responsibility from systemic structures to individuals themselves. The system medicalizes their suffering – offering therapy and medication (and if you’re in the US, does it for even more profit) instead of enacting systemic change.
Normal and healthy human reactions to their material conditions i.e. “mental illness”. Only a matter of time before that finger in the dam doesn’t cut it any more.
“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem, make sure you are not in fact just surrounded by assholes”
William Gibson
Just my two cents as an old man who has lived around the world and has seen how the UK and other countries have evolved over the decades. When I’ve been most stressed over the years, and I’ve seen it with my friends too, it’s always been to do with affordability. The mismatch between what my income was versus what I thought I needed to live a secure life and plan for the future. This has become a much bigger problem for millennials and gen Z then it ever was for my generation- certainly in the UK- because of the ridiculous cost of housing- whether that’s buying or renting. The reason the UK haven’t built nearly enough homes is because a significant number of influential people – be that voters in certain areas, landowners in other areas, property owners, don’t actually want new housing to be built, at least not in their neighborhood. The population went from 55 million in the 1970s to 69 million now, most of that was due to net migration (including me! This isn’t a racist post). Anyway, my point is: this financial insecurity has been normalised incrementally and this is why GPs can now say in all seriousness that it’s not mental illness, it’s everyday stress. “Everyday stress” belittles the brutal reality that leading a fundamentally insecure existence brings. GPs earn up to around £110k a year for NHS work alone. That’s literally 3 times the average UK income. So, take this from someone who’s actually doing pretty well financially, has had an easy life, and is old enough to know what stress is: don’t let the UK middle class tell you what is and what isn’t “reasonable”, whoever they are, on the stress front. If I was young, I would be rising up, banging on my local councillors and MP doors, and ask them what the fuck they are going to do about it and when.
It’s better to over-diagnose than under-diagnose, and it’s a good idea to care for your mental health.
I don’t think anyone should be shamed or told what they are going through isn’t significant. Life is stressful and we all need help sometimes.
The newspapers need to chill with shaming people for speaking openly about their mental health.
While I agree, life is getting harder for people as wages stagnate and the cost of the basics keep going up. I suspect a lot of people feel like they are drowning and that low level of constant background stress is not helping people deal with everyday stress at work. It might be situational stress, however the economic situation of a lot of people and an increasingly interconnected world does mean that escaping the situation has become a lot harder. People are burning out because the grind is harder than it really needs to be.
I actually agree with this and I’ve been saying for a very long time that doctors too easily dish out antidepressants. If you have clinical depression then fair enough however if you don’t have clinical depression antidepressants mostly likely won’t do shit. A lot of doctors seem to confuse clinical depression with other types of depression though and happily dish out antidepressants as quick get out of here fix.
The trouble is that the system we live in has made “everyday stress” an acceptable and standard thing.
So obviously we’re going to find a way to profit off “fixing” a problem we caused.
frankly i don’t give a toss what they say if they’re not trained to diagnose the condition.
Been saying it for fucking years. It’s almost as if anything other than a stable emotional state is bad. Its okay to feel stressed, anxiety, concern. All normal human responses. There are extreme cases and cases that do require MH support undoubtedly
100% agree. It’s almost become the current fad to be diagnosed with a mental health condition. Not great for those that actually do!
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