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MENTAL HEALTH, CURRENT DIAGNOSTIC & TREATMENT PARADIGMS
Mental Health in the UK
One in four people in the UK experience a mental health problem currently
The NHS and pharmaceutical advances have provided extraordinary benefits for the people of the UK, delivering free access to treatment that has saved and extended countless lives. However, the dominant medical model has long centred on a biochemical view of illness. Diagnosis is categorised, medication prescribed & symptoms treated in isolation.
This NHS approach has strengths, but it also has blind spots.
Many patients find that thier symptoms persist, resurface or multiply over time. Professionals themselves are often limited by training syllabi that have not kept pace with modern neuroscience, leaving crucial knowledge about the interplay of brain, body & environment absent from mainstream care. In reality, health is not confined to neat categories in a textbook. Emotional, social & physiological factors are inseparable & unless we address them together, wellness remains inaccessible and incomplete.
WHAT DEFINES:
Wellness, Health & Current Treatments
It is only in medical textbooks that the body’s complex systems are neatly separated.
Over the past decade, a sharp increase in mental health difficulties across the UK have been reported. Recent research reveals that common mental health problems affect approximately one in six adults in England every week, and up to one in four experience a mental health issue across a year. These are far from minor trends, they translate into a staggering economic burden.
In 2022, the total societal cost of mental ill health in England reached approximately £300 billion, encompassing economic losses, diminished quality of life, healthcare and care costs. This underscores the urgency of reframing how we understand and respond to emotional distress.
For most of us in England, wellness is something we expect simply by living our daily lives: moving, eating, sleeping & managing the basics that keep us functioning. When we fall ill, we instinctively turn to the familiar systems of support: the medication drawer at home, the pharmacist or the NHS for answers, diagnoses & treatment. From a simple Lemsip to antibiotics, from surgery to therapy, this medical model has long shaped how we think about health.
Emotional Health Versus Mental Health & What I Taught
Coach Michelle's healthcare career, spanning over twenty years, saw her serving as a UK national healthcare trainer for large care providers. At that time, mental health training focused almost exclusively on conditions like schizophrenia, agoraphobia, and other severe psychiatric disorders. No one was discussing the grief of losing a pet or the overwhelm of everyday stress. Today, far too often, ordinary human emotions are treated as medical issues, which distorts how people experience and seek support.
The Medicalisation of Emotional Health
Our current systems tend to medicalise emotional health, offering solutions that are expedient but often superficial. Such an approach may facilitate a return to work, but frequently bypasses deeper underlying causes. Talk therapy is powerful and valuable, but when it comes to trauma such as PTSD or complex PTSD (childhood trauma), the spoken word alone often cannot reach the amygdala, the fear-driven region of the brain.
The NHS and pharmaceutical industry have undoubtedly given us extraordinary benefits, providing almost universal access to free treatment and prescriptions. Yet the solutions offered have often been insufficient, as the system has focused on a single route to healing: the biochemical model. This has left many people without lasting answers, avoiding surgery or repeated medications because the root causes of their suffering remain unaddressed.
Medical knowledge has advanced at a remarkable pace over the last few decades, but professional training has not always kept up. Doctors and nurses are trained with outdated university syllabi, lagging behind the evolving advances in trauma, psychedelic or sleep medic sciences to name a few, leaving patients to search for solutions outside the conventional system. Increasingly, lesser-known approaches that honour the body as an interconnected network, where mind, nervous system, physiology & our external environment function in unison, are beginning to emerge. Our lived reality shows us: emotional, social & environmental factors combined contribute powerfully to health, wellness, recovery & optimal sleep, performance & success in life.
As a healthcare professional of more than two decades, Coach Michelle has witnessed firsthand the growing reliance on quick fixes, patients cycling in and out of ill health, often returning with new complications rooted in the same unresolved issues. Her insight doesn’t come from professional experience alone. She has personally travelled the difficult NHS journey as a service user, facing misdiagnoses, lack of diagnoses, and treatment plans that targeted the wrong problems. At her lowest point, she received multiple referrals across departments that rarely communicated with one another, leaving her to navigate a fragmented system while fighting to protect her own wellbeing. There were times she even had to leave the UK to recover.
While deeply grateful for the NHS, Michelle has experienced the system from both sides as both provider and patient. It is these lived experiences, combined with her professional expertise, that equip her to guide you with authenticity, empathy & a clear understanding of the challenges you face.
Coach Michelle's Cycles of NHS Referrals, Misdiagnosis & Ineffective Treatments.
DIAGNOSTICS: Emotional Health Versus Mental Health
From care worker to care manager, to regional & national healthcare trainer for large care providers, public & private, Coach Michelle trained mental health courses focussing almost exclusively on life-limiting conditions like schizophrenia, agoraphobia & other severe psychiatric disorders. Society was not discussing the grief of losing a pet or the overwhelm of everyday stress. Today however, far too often, ordinary human emotions are treated as medical issues, which distorts how people experience and seek support.
Our current UK systems tend to medicalise emotional health, offering solutions that are expedient but often superficial. Such an approach may facilitate a return to work, but it frequently bypasses deeper underlying causes. Talk therapy is powerful, valuable & necessary in the right conditions, but when it comes to trauma such as PTSD or complex PTSD, or functional neurological disorders (FND) spoken language alone often cannot access the fear-driven centre of the brain: the amygdala, which governs our most primal responses.
Often overlooked in the English healthcare system is the brain’s extraordinary network of electrical activity, communicating across regions faster than lightning. This dynamic system shapes our mindset, how we react & function, yet it is rarely considered in treatment. Recognising and harnessing this powerful neuroscience opens the door to deeper change, greater resilience & meaningful, lasting transformation.
As a result, many people remain in cycles of instability: medications can bring burdensome side effects, and therapy can feel insufficient. Coach Michelle has seen countless individuals whose lives were disrupted by overwhelming emotions, strained relationships, and treatments that never addressed the core issues. She once found herself among those very statistics, fighting battles that seemed endless. But her transformation into full health became her turning point. Today, that journey fuels her purpose: to guide others toward the clarity, stability & strength she knows is possible after finally becoming 100% healthy in mind & body herself.
UK GP surgeries are overwhelmed, waiting lists are long, and when you finally get an appointment, the experience often feels rushed. Many GPs, despite their best intentions, are exhausted from back-to-back patients and constrained by legislation that demands endless form-filling. This leaves little room for the deeper, traditional skill of semiotics: the careful study of signs, symptoms, and patterns that create a true understanding of what a patient is experiencing.
You deserve more than a hurried consultation. You deserve to be seen, heard, and understood.
If you’re ready for a more comprehensive, human approach to your wellbeing, now is the time to take action. Reach out and begin a journey where your whole story matters.
TREATMENTS & Learning from International Experts.
Experts like Sebern Fisher and Bessel van der Kolk in the field of developmental trauma, or Complex PTSD, have largely shifted their trauma-focused PTSD work to include neurofeedback as standard practice in working with trauma. Their experience echoes mounting evidence of neurofeedback’s efficacy in helping the brain restore balance and resilience, particularly for those whose trauma is deeply embedded in neurological pathways causing cycles of behavioural, emotional and physical ill-health, from addictions to relationship dramas.
Current NHS diagnostic frameworks rely heavily on categorisation, labels that seldom reflect the role of brainwave dysregulation or how chronic stress rewires the nervous system. This gap leaves the root of many distress signals unaddressed.
Over-Arousal and Under-Arousal: Symptoms Mislabelled
Symptoms such as anxiety, panic, or irritable bowel syndrome often arise from over-arousal. Conversely, fatigue, disconnection, or depression can stem from under-arousal. Unfortunately, the system typically prices each symptom as a separate diagnosis, disconnected from the underlying neural dysregulation. This fragmented approach hinders comprehensive healing.
Coach Michelle's own healing journey inspired the creation of RecaliBRAINtion® having experienced a life of cycles of symptoms, from sudden limb paralysis, temporary blindness in one eye to stuttering and IBS. Diagnoses of functional neurological disorder (FND) and complex PTSD should have been the diagnosis if had she ‘entered’ into the NHS system she instinctively knew to avoid as even now in 2025 these diagnosis are rare and overlooked.
Grappling with physical, cognitive, emotional, and neurological symptoms for decades took a significant toll on Coach Michelle’s life. Instead of relying on long-term medication or traditional talk therapy, she found her turning point through neurofeedback and applied neuroscience.
This approach moved beyond illness labels and focused on regulating the nervous system through real-time brainwave feedback. The non-invasive, non-linear NeurOptimal® system became the key to her transformation, and the transformation of countless others over many years. Conditions once loosely assigned to her, ranging from chronic viral vulnerability to autistic traits, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder, no longer define her. Neurofeedback helped her reclaim a life she once believed was out of reach.
A Call for Changing Paradigms
Despite neurofeedback being around for more than sixty years, it remains largely unknown in mainstream healthcare. During Coach Michelle's near two decade professional career in healthcare and also as a patient in numerous departments, she had never heard of it, reflecting how dominant the pharmaceutical model has become.
She is not anti-medication, but is passionate about expanding what real care looks like & committed to a broader, neuroscience-informed approach, one that shifts treatment and diagnostic paradigms and truly addresses root-level brain and nervous system regulation.
At RecaliBRAINtion® assessments take between 60-120 minutes minimum, are done over time to see you in different states and also never online, but only in person. Coach Michelle helps clients navigate over 100 symptoms, touching nearly every aspect of mental, physical, emotional & neurological health.
Learn more: see success reviews, the assessment process & neurofeedback on the pages or blogs.
You deserve care that truly understands you, not a rushed set of unlinked appointments or a one-size-fits-all approach. If you’re truly ready to address the root of your challenges and experience a personalised, science-backed approach to your wellbeing, take the first step today. Connect with Coach Michelle and start a journey where your full story is seen, valued & supported.
