It’s a measure of how much the debate around mental health has changed that Matt Hancock’s latest announcement on social prescribing for mental illness isn’t being written up as mere quackery. The Health and Social Care Secretary today pledged a £4.5 million fund for these schemes, which include gardening, arts clubs, running and so on.
Hancock is worried about possible over-prescription of anti-depressants and the associated risk of diagnosis creep, whereby people who are not depressed but quite understandably struggling with life events such as a bereavement are given a medical diagnosis and handed pills that aren’t really going to help them. As I’ve written before, anti-depressants are not without their unpleasant side-effects, and it is extremely hard to come off them, even if your symptoms have improved dramatically, so this is a serious matter.
Social prescribing isn’t just for people who have been wrongly diagnosed, though: it is already recommended for a range of mental illnesses, including ones with far more severe symptoms than depression.
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