Concept creep describes how some concepts expand their meanings over time. In psychiatry, this can result in less severe symptoms being increasingly interpreted as “illness,” and normal behaviors such as grief being pathologized. A new article published in Social Issues and Policy Review argues that concept creep is partially responsible for the growing global mental health crisis. Author Nick Haslam contends that interpreting experiences that were previously understood as temporary emotional difficulties or normal reactions to life events as symptoms of mental “illness” can lead to more people identifying themselves as having mental health conditions and increasingly defining themselves through the language of diagnosis and pathology. This can result in increased distress, reduced resilience, exposure to unnecessary, potentially harmful interventions, and immense pressure on already stressed mental healthcare systems. Haslam writes:
“Expansive concepts of mental illness increase the prevalence of mental health complaints not just by increasing the number of people who conceptualize their distress as illness but also by changing the nature, severity, and durability of that distress through a variety of social psychological processes. They also increase the likelihood that people will seek treatment for their distress, contributing to increased service use. In essence, cultural changes, some of which are intended to increase our knowledge and awareness of mental ill health in the hope of combatting it, may be having ironic effects. By leading us to interpret more human experiences and behaviors as pathologies, they may be contributing to making us ill.”
The Expansion of Psychiatric Language and the Medicalization of Everyday Life
Previous research has found that the use of psychiatric language in daily life is increasing. A 2025 Czech study of journalistic writing found that the frequency of diagnostic terms increased sharply between 1990 and 2022. This study also found that everyday adjectives describing human emotions, such as “reckless” and “sad,” were increasingly linked to clinical language. A 2022 study analyzing 10% of all English language twitter posts between 2010 and 2021 found that the popularity of the phrase “mental health” increased by nearly 100 times. This research also suggested that discussions around mental health were becoming more socially visible. A 2026 study reports that self-diagnosis of psychiatric problems is increasing in adolescents, at least in part as a result of the proliferation of psychiatric language on social media.
Experts have raised concerns about how the creep of psychiatric language and perspectives may encourage people to interpret normal emotional responses to difficult life events as a pathology in need of medical treatment, foreclosing on and weakening social, cultural, and interpersonal frameworks for responding to distress. For example, the 2007 book The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder argues that psychiatry has failed to meaningfully distinguish between ordinary sadness and depressive disorders. The authors contend that normal sadness is frequently interpreted as an “illness,” and that the focus on diagnosis means the circumstances that produce sadness and psychological distress are often overlooked.
Nick Haslam has written previously about how psychiatrization can result in overdiagnosis, the medicalization of ordinary distress, and unnecessary psychiatric treatment. He believes the expanding definitions of mental “illness” can also redirect attention and resources away from people with more severe symptoms towards those with milder difficulties and increase strain on mental healthcare systems. Increases in psychiatric diagnosis can also expose more people to stigma, discrimination, and negative changes in self-perception and expectations about the future.
Concept Creep and the Mental Health Crisis
Haslam identifies two modes of concept creep which he calls “horizontal” and “vertical.” Horizontal concept creep describes a concept expanding into new situations or contexts. For example, “depression” can now be used to describe experiences outside of prolonged sadness, such as brain fog, procrastination, or lack of motivation being labeled “executive dysfunction caused by depression.” Vertical concept creep refers to a concept expanding to include experiences that are less severe than originally intended, like using the term “depression” to describe normal sadness.
According to Haslam, concept creep in psychiatry is largely driven by two factors. (1) Increasing attention to harm. Society has generally become more attentive to psychological suffering, vulnerability, emotional safety, and the impact of negative life experiences. While this has led to greater recognition of suffering that was previously overlooked or ignored, it can also encourage people to interpret a wider range of experiences as harmful or pathological. (2) The expansion of the mental health industry. Psychiatry’s influence on everyday life has grown significantly. This includes mental health awareness campaigns and terminology becoming increasingly more common on social media, in schools and universities, in workplaces, and in everyday conversations. This has resulted in people increasingly understanding their experiences through the lens of medical and diagnostic frameworks.
This can affect mental health in several ways. Self-diagnosis has become more common as people increasingly identify their experiences in psychiatric labels. For example, someone experiencing anxiety is now more likely to be exposed to psychiatric narratives that frame anxiety as pathological, and are more likely to interpret their distress as evidence of an anxiety disorder.
Diagnoses can also become central to identity for some patients and service users. Instead of thinking “I am experiencing anxiety,” the increasing exposure to psychiatric narratives may cause a person to think “I am an anxious person.”Rather than viewing distress as temporary, diagnostic frameworks encourage people to view distress as part of their identity. This can result in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, For example, someone that has had issues with anxiety may pay more attention to their symptoms, increasing their severity, or avoid challenging situations which may ultimately contribute to more distress.
Haslam also points to the negative effects of psychiatric treatment as leading to reduced mental health. Psychiatric treatment can cause increased focus on symptoms, reduced expectations of recovery, dependence on therapists, reduced motivation to change, and negative effects from psychiatric drugs. A 2023 study out of Australia found that people going to psychotherapy for mild distress were three times more likely to deteriorate than improve. As psychiatric concepts spread, increasing numbers of people may identify mild distress as pathological, seeking out treatment that is more likely to result in harm.
Concept creep can result in trivialization of severe psychological distress. For example, using language such as “trauma” to describe an uncomfortable experience may reduce the perceived seriousness of “trauma” as a consequence of abuse. Haslam points to research around the casual use of trauma-related language on the social media platform TikTok as an example of concept creep blurring the lines between mild and severe distress. Social media platforms can also misrepresent and overgeneralize the symptoms of psychiatric diagnoses. For example, many TikTok videos about ADHD present feeling overwhelmed by thoughts, hyperfocus, and difficulty regulating emotions as symptoms of ADHD despite these experiences not being symptoms according to the DSM-5.
Haslam presents past research to demonstrate some ways concept creep in psychiatry is likely causing harm. One study found that diagnostic labels can cause people to perceive difficulties as less manageable and recovery as less likely. An experiment around trauma concepts found that participants exposed to a wider definition of trauma reported higher levels of distress after viewing an upsetting film. Past research has suggested that identifying strongly with anxiety or trauma may be linked to less adaptive coping and reduced resilience. Another study examined young adults that were identified by an assessment as being unlikely to have ADHD. After attending an ADHD workshop, the proportion of participants that self-identified as having ADHD doubled.
Haslam makes five recommendations to combat concept creep in psychiatry and limit harm. (1) Reconsider awareness campaigns. While he believes awareness campaigns have contributed to reduced stigma and increased help-seeking, they are not universally beneficial and may lead to false self-diagnosis. (2) Improve diagnostic accuracy. This mainly consists of teaching people the difference between ordinary emotional distress and severe distress that may require treatment. (3) De-emphasize diagnostic labels by focusing more on difficulties and challenges people experience rather than psychiatric categories. (4) Focus on functional impairment by considering how symptoms interfere with everyday life, not simply whether they are present or not. (5) Challenge the mental health crisis narrative and de-essentailize disorders. This includes not portraying mental “illness” as universally common, permanent, or as a marker of personal identity. He concludes:
“Many factors are likely to contribute to the rise in mental health complaints that has been unfolding globally over the last two decades. Economic inequality, climate change, social isolation, and technological developments are all sure to play some part. To argue that cultural shifts are also implicated in these trends is not to deny the importance of socioeconomic and ecological realities. Neither does it imply that rising ill health is all in people’s heads or that it is evidence that people have become fragile or weak. Raising the possibility that broadened concepts of mental illness are part of the complex story of the mental health crisis is simply to identify another factor that should be considered in this generationally urgent task. This factor may be a more tractable focus for intervention than some of the major socioeconomic trends that contribute to mental ill health.”
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Haslam, N. (2026). Concept creep and the mental health crisis. Social Issues and Policy Review, 20(1). (Link)
