Professor Peter Fonagy’s landmark review will reject claims that Britain is suffering from mass overdiagnosis of ADHD and autism.

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That conclusion should be taken seriously. Most people seeking a diagnosis are experiencing genuine difficulties, even if misdiagnosis and overdiagnosis occur in some cases.

None of this will surprise anyone who has watched a child struggle silently through school, or a young adult struggle to enter work, without understanding why. For most people, a diagnosis is not a label sought for any advantage. It is a relief – an explanation, at last, for a difficulty that was real all along. Any serious response to this debate has to start there.

Yet our welfare system has not kept pace with this new reality. Since 2019, the number of working-age people claiming disability or incapacity benefits has risen by 62 per cent – driven increasingly by the young, for whom mental-health and neurodevelopmental conditions are now near-universal in a work-capability assessment.

For a growing number of people, the system treats mental health as if it were binary. Increasingly, this means a diagnosis functions as grounds to leave work, rather than unlocking a route to keep someone in employment.........

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