Theodore Dalrymple

The real problem with mental health benefits

A contributory factor to the continuing impoverishment of Britain is psychiatric diagnosis – or rather, the superstitious official belief in it.

More than two thirds of Incapacity Benefit claims over the space of two years were for supposed psychiatric conditions. Psychiatric diagnosis has produced more invalids than the first world war. It is the foundry in which the mind-forg’d manacles are produced – mass-produced, in fact.

The most common diagnoses – of depression and anxiety, for example – are completely dependent on what the patient tells the doctor. The doctor’s default position, quite rightly, is to believe what his patients tell him. Failure to do this can lead to disaster, besides which he has little time to investigate further.

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