Young people ‘overdiagnosed’ with mental health conditions, Hunt says

Young people are being overdiagnosed with mental health conditions, a former cabinet minster has suggested.

Ex-health secretary Jeremy Hunt backed calls to radically reform the Send system and argued society has “lost sight of the fundamental reality that child development is a messy and uneven process”, in the foreword of a Policy Exchange report.

The report titled “Out of Control” argues that definitions of mental ill health and neurodivergence have been socially expanded, leading to overwhelm in the system.

One in five children in England have special educational needs and disabilities (Send), the report states, placing huge pressure on support services.

The report, which focuses on addressing the rise in psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders among children and young people, calls for a reinvention of education, health and care plans (EHCPs), and for children with the most severe needs to get the support they deserve faster.

In its foreword, Sir Jeremy wrote: “Mental ill-health and neurodiversity now accounts for more than half of the post-pandemic increase we have seen in claimants of disability benefit. Spending on Send provision has sky-rocketed and risks the financial sustainability of local government.

“Rather than assuming that more money or more of the same is the answer, we need to ask more fundamental questions. Is a cash transfer – or a label that means young people are treated and come to see themselves as different – the right way to help them? What about the importance of good work, physical activity, social connection? These factors are too often deprioritised in our policy prescription.

“Across the political spectrum, and amongst a growing range of practitioners, it is now recognised that there is a level of ‘overdiagnosis’ our system. We need to cut through the complexity to better understand the drivers of demand we are seeing.”

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Source: The Independent, 27 August 2025