When the health secretary, Wes Streeting, suggested the “overdiagnosis” of some mental health conditions was a factor in the government’s welfare changes, many saw the comments as playing into an unhelpful culture-war stereotype of coddled millennials – and as echoing Rishi Sunak’s claim, a year ago, that there was a “sicknote culture” plaguing Britain’s economy.
But media coverage of Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan’s recent book, The Age of Diagnosis, has amplified and lent credibility to the idea that a diagnosis, in itself, can risk limiting an individual’s life prospects.
