From drug treatment to therapy apps and wellness trackers, we believe we can intervene to improve our emotional and psychological well-being. Advocates of treatment have won out and largely silenced any opposition. In the UK, one in three women have been prescribed antidepressants. US spending on mental health treatment and wellbeing exceeds $700 billion. More than is spent on higher education. The counter view that emotional distress is not an illness to be cured, but a natural response to life's uncertainties, is dismissed as 'Victorian'. Yet record numbers are now suffering from depression and anxiety. Identified as the 'treatment-prevalence paradox', studies have shown that despite radical increases in treatment, there has been no improvement in mental illness.

Does the phrase 'mental health' already medicalise experience and undermine the variety of human response to circumstance? Have we created a mental health industrial complex that calls for ever more spending while failing to deliver well-being? Or should we be profoundly grateful to live in an era where treatments are available to alleviate mental distress?

Maverick psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff, Freudian neuroscientist Mark Solms, neuropsychiatrist Edward Bullmore, and multi-NYT bestselling author Sarah Wilson debate the mental health industry.

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