Letter to the Editor: Are young people overpathologising their own mental health? We need empirical research

The journal's recent debate series ('are we overpathologising young people's mental health?') featured compelling articles regarding the pathologisation of emotional distress in young people. Much of the concern over overpathologising is that young people are overpathologising their own mental health (i.e. identifying as having mental illnesses when they are actually experiencing normative, non-clinical levels of emotional distress; Foulkes & Andrews, New Ideas Psychol., 69, 2023, 101010). I wish to briefly share a relevant finding from a recent study (on mental illness self-labelling in late adolescence) and highlight ways that new empirical work can move this debate forward.