Politicians’ sloganeering. Populism. Influencers saying outlandish things for clout. Some days, it can feel like we’re being screamed at from the moment we wake up. And that’s before you consider the conspiracy theories and clickbait insisting our regular habits are sabotaging our health – or that this one trick (or product) will transform it. Welcome to the attention economy.
If the easiest way to grab someone’s attention is to frighten them, the second most effective way is to make them angry. No wonder we live in an environment where much of what we’re exposed to is designed to make us feel anxious and reactive.
In my latest book, The Nuance Drought, I explore how this harms us – one such consequence being how it pushes culture towards an ‘all or nothing’ mentality. The way we’re presented with information has become binary and inflexible – and so our thinking mirrors that; terrible for the health of society – and individuals, too.
One notable conversation was with Dr Leor Zmigrod, a research fellow and psychologist who specialises in how some brains become susceptible to extreme ideologies. Her research revealed that rigid thinkers are easier to manipulate, less likely to show empathy and experience higher levels of shame (they self-censor any ‘traitorous’ thoughts they might have which contradict their binary world view).
I suspect this rigidity is contributing to the high levels of anxiety that a third of the UK population report experiencing; the way mental health is understood can’t be immune to the nuance-dissolving influence of the attention economy. Mental health is infinitely complex – I’ve been a campaigner on these issues for almost two decades now and the more I know, the less I realise I know.
No such humility was shown by the former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who last year insisted – without evidence – that mental health issues are ‘overdiagnosed’. Or Conservative minister Mel Stride, announcing that mental health culture had ‘gone too far’, that people are medicalising ‘life’s ups and downs’ and need to be more ‘resilient’.
This isn’t just about political rhetoric, either: once we get used to viewing health through a binary lens, those thinking patterns become fertile ground for industries that profit from selling simple solutions to complex problems – our health challenges included.
As science writer David Robert Grimes told me, reducing health to binaries such as 'natural is good' and 'chemical is bad' doesn’t hold – but can lead vulnerable people to fall for scams that harm their health. Most pharmaceuticals are refined versions of compounds originally found in nature, he explained, while arsenic, uranium and Ebola are all entirely natural – but, for obvious reasons, we shouldn’t be consuming them.
It made me think of the strongly held opinions people have about mental health medications. It might be true that in an underfunded system, GPs sometimes prescribe SSRIs too readily (and there are ongoing questions about the research base, efficacy and struggles with side effects and withdrawal). There will be those who were prescribed the wrong medication; those for whom it has no effect at all; those for whom it made their illness worse; and those whose symptoms got worse for a few months before getting better. It’s also true that, for many people, medication is both necessary and life-saving.
The human experience is both complex and nuanced – and never more so than when it comes to our mental health. The more we let the attention economy force it into neat categories, the poorer and less forgiving we risk our conversations, decisions and understanding of ourselves, and others, becoming.
Natasha Devon MBE is a campaigner, author and broadcaster. The Nuance Drought is published on 10th September 2026, by Icon Books, priced £16.99
