Helen Scott questions the medicalisation of mental distress, along with the use of labels to define illness, and argues that lip service is paid to service-user choice

The author of this article worked as a clinical psychologist in a community mental health team for more than five years. This is a personal reflection on her concerns about working in a system that seeks to explain service users’ problems by categorising and labelling distress, viewing it as biological in nature and treating it with medication or a combination of drug and psychological therapy.