There is much talk about the crisis in mental health. A significant number of young people are not in employment or education, and there is a big rise in autism and ADHD diagnoses.

There is an odd dichotomy between the advice you read in newspaper problem pages, like Philippa Perry’s in The Guardian, and treatments offered on the NHS.

In the former, childhood experiences are considered, with links made to current problems. The unique complexity of each individual and their situation is recognised.

As a mental health professional, I found that this approach is the most helpful in bringing about positive change. It enables people to stay in work, and make good relationships.

These days, the NHS approach seems to be that a diagnosis is made, often of autism or ADHD, then treatment based on that diagnosis is offered. There appears to be no further exploration of the unique individual and their unique circumstances.

On the NHS website the section on autism includes advice on how to pursue a diagnosis. Under the heading DON’T in caps and bold, is one instruction – ‘try not to talk about other things – autism should be the main thing you talk about’. In my professional life, that instruction would have been judged bad practice.

It is too limiting – it prevents any further exploration of the possible sources of the individuals’ distress. If, for example, someone seeking an autism diagnosis mentions that they were sexually abused as a child, would the response be – “We are not here to talk about that, we are here to talk about your autism.”?

In my experience, the most effective help for distressed individuals is to listen attentively, empathically, and without judgement. This NHS instruction means that clinicians will listen selectively, ignoring information that does not relate to the diagnosis they want to make.

People in distress often seek an autistic or ADHD diagnosis for themselves or their child because they have heard about those conditions. Autism and ADHD are neurological conditions; a diagnosis can offer relief to the sufferer and to parents. Therapy that promotes change is hard work; getting a diagnosis and following advice based on it is easier, more straightforward, for sufferers and practitioners.

I read online an article by a mother desperate to get an ADHD diagnosis for her four-year old. She is a single mother in full time work. In my professional life, we would have looked at the possibility that the child was suffering from separation anxiety. An ADHD label might get the mother more support, but if the diagnosis is wrong it would not help the child. It would label them for life, without addressing the real problem.

In the sixties, my husband, about twenty years old then, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. His psychiatrist referred him to a residential NHS unit, The Cassell, a Therapeutic Community that offers group and individual therapy.

My husband believed that if he hadn’t had that intervention from The Cassell, he would have remained unemployed and a drain on public services for the rest of his life. Instead, he got a job and had a successful career. He married and had children.

He was, as it happens, Asperger’s – the old term for what is now called autism. He wasn’t formally diagnosed, but I realised it was the case, and he agreed.

If his psychiatrist had diagnosed him as autistic, and offered treatment based on that diagnosis, I doubt that my husband would have gone on to lead a normal life.

Working for the NHS and Social Services in the eighties, nineties and early 2000s I saw many units that offered effective treatment being closed down by Tory and Labour governments. Politicians tend to think short term, and in the short term these units are expensive. In the long term they save money.

My husband’s residential experience would have cost a lot, but how much more expensive it would have been had he continued to be dependent on the NHS and Social Services. Instead, he paid tax for the rest of his life.

Mental health provision in the past was not perfect, but better than it seems to be now. As with so much else, things have got worse. The cost in human misery, and to the state, is high.

* Catherine Wilson first worked as a clinician in the NHS and Social Services, then as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. She is a Liberal Democrat member in Wales.