Home Health Not everyone needs to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety, says Tony Blair as he tells Britons to “stop medicalising life’s ups and downs”.

Not everyone needs to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety, says Tony Blair as he tells Britons to “stop medicalising life’s ups and downs”.

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Former Prime Minister Tony Blair warns against excessive medicalization of

Former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair has warned against excessive medicalisation of life’s “ups and downs”.

Sir Tony, who served as Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007, said there is a danger in telling too many people going through life’s normal challenges that they suffer from a mental health condition.

It comes amid a rise in the number of young people being diagnosed with mental health problems such as anxiety and depression in recent years.

Almost a quarter of children in England now suffer from a “probable mental disorder”, according to a recent report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Experts have previously highlighted the impact of the Covid pandemic and the disruption it caused to children’s education and social lives, along with the cost of living crisis and social media, as detrimental to children’s mental wellbeing .

But speaking on the Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future podcast, Sir Tony said: “I think we’ve been very, very focused on mental health and people self-diagnosing.”

‘We are spending a lot more on mental health now than we were a few years ago. And it’s hard to see what the objective reasons for that are.’

The former prime minister added: “Life has its ups and downs and everyone experiences them.” And you have to be careful about encouraging people to think that they have some kind of condition other than simply facing life’s challenges.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair warns against over-medicalising life’s ‘ups and downs’

“We need a proper conversation about this because we really can’t afford to spend the amount of money we spend on mental health.”

Sir Tony’s calls come after shocking new figures showed the number of children referred for specialist treatment for anxiety has doubled in just four years.

More than 200,000 children in England (or 4,000 each week) were waiting to start treatment over the past year.

This is an increase of more than 100,000 compared to 2019/2020, when almost 99,000 were stuck in the queue.

Experts, who described the figures as “shocking”, today attribute the “staggering” increase to concerns about exams, the influence of social networks and the cost of living crisis.

But they warned that the statistics could be just the tip of the iceberg, as other children suffer in silence and go unnoticed.

The new figures, from NHS England, found there were 204,526 new referrals of patients aged 17 and under whose main cause was anxiety in 2023/24.

By comparison, in 2019-20, the year before Covid arrived, this figure was 98,953. In 2016-17 there were 3,879.

Shocking new figures show the number of children referred for specialist treatment for anxiety has doubled in just four years.

Shocking new figures show the number of children referred for specialist treatment for anxiety has doubled in just four years.

More than 200,000 children in England, or 4,000 each week, were waiting to start treatment over the past year.

More than 200,000 children in England (or 4,000 each week) were waiting to start treatment over the past year.

Andy Bell, chief executive of the Center for Mental Health charity, said at the time: “These stark figures underline the urgency of tackling the mental health of children and young people today.

He added: ‘Our research indicates that academic pressures, particularly those related to exams, have intensified over the last decade.

‘Rising levels of poverty and inequality have also contributed to increased anxiety among children and young people, including factors such as financial strain within households and the impact of racism.

‘Evidence also suggests that online harms, such as cyberbullying and pressures around appearance, are relentless and can fuel anxiety in children.

“The pandemic has amplified these pressures on children and young people by disrupting their routines and increasing feelings of isolation and uncertainty about the world and their future.”

Despite this, there are concerns among health chiefs that young people are being flagged with mental health diagnoses inappropriately.

Last year, the NHS launched a task force to examine a worrying rise in the number of children and adults diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Experts have warned that dishonest private clinics are overdiagnosing the disease and have questioned the widespread prescription of powerful stimulant drugs to treat it.

Last year, the NHS launched a task force to examine a worrying rise in the number of children and adults diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Last year, the NHS launched a task force to examine a worrying rise in the number of children and adults diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

1736757169 584 Not everyone needs to be diagnosed with depression and

1736757170 301 Not everyone needs to be diagnosed with depression and

The booming market is believed to have been fueled by celebrities including model Katie Price, Love Island star Olivia Attwood and actress Sheridan Smith speaking out about their ordeal with ADHD and waits of up to ten years for an NHS assessment.

Social media is also full of users telling how the medications helped them calm down, control their restlessness, and increase their concentration.

The number of patients taking medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has doubled in six years; 230,000 in England took these drugs last year.

The largest increase has been in young adults, and treatment has increased five-fold among people ages 25 to 39 since 2015.

The task force will bring together health, education and justice leaders to better understand how many people are affected and how to improve their care.

They will investigate “the rate of growth within the independent sector and the potential variation in the service models and thresholds being used”, and collect data to “fully understand the size of the challenge”.

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