Nuts

Doctors ‘overdiagnosing’ mental health conditions, says Streeting

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.”


It's quite a well known problem. Many doctors suffer from malingerphobia, a morbid fear of malingerers. Too often, their reaction to a suspected malingerer is to slap on a possible mental diagnosis and refer them to the psychiatric bods, merely to get the supposed malingerer out of the surgery.

Unfortunately, malingerphobia leads to exactly this problem, the “overdiagnosing” of mental health conditions. There has been a case where someone applying for the job of GP receptionist was mistakenly identified as a malingerer, diagnosed as a bit bonkers and shoved off for psychiatric assessment. 

Sadly, the error was never identified and the would-be receptionist never worked again.