Gavin Francis and Alastair Santhouse

GP Dr Gavin Francis and psychiatrist Dr Alastair Santhouse discuss mental health, whether we are prescribing too much medication for mental health, and what future treatment options might be.

Francis is a GP and urgent care physician with an interest in mental health and author of books including Adventures in Human Being, Shapeshifters and Intensive Care. In his latest, The Unfragile Mind: Making Sense of Mental Health, he explains how up to a fifth of young people in the UK suffer a mental health disorder and one in four adults are prescribed psychiatric medication. He says this represents a huge expansion in mental health labelling and he sets out to explain what is going on. Francis argues that the mind is dynamic and adaptive and is better addressed not with labels but with curiosity, kindness, humility and hope.

Santhouse is a consultant neuropsychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital in London and author of Head First: A Psychiatrist’s Stories of Mind and Body. In his new book, No More Normal: Mental Health in an Age of Over-Diagnosis, he explores the rise in diagnosable mental health conditions. Santhouse questions whether we are less psychologically healthy than previous generations. He argues that we should focus on a core of severe mental health problems and de-medicalise a large range of other normal human experiences.