One of the UK’s top doctors has launched a blistering attack on Britain’s “monochrome” health system – calling for a revolution in the way we treat patients.
Speaking at the Beyond Pills International Conference last week, Dr Michael Dixon, chair of the College of Medicine, declared that the age of “one-size-fits-all” treatment is over. In its place, he said, must come “Personal Medicine” – a radical, individualised approach to health that puts patients at the centre of their own care.
“Medicine must now become ever more relevant,” he told delegates gathering for the 4th International Conference on Personal and Integrative Medicine. “Otherwise, how are we going to meet the most urgent challenges of our time?”
Those challenges, he said, include spiralling obesity, mental health crises, and soaring rates of chronic illness. “Life expectancy has plateaued and is now falling for the less well-off,” he said. “Forty percent of 11-year-olds in London are overweight or obese, one in five people are on antidepressants, and a quarter of young girls are self-harming. We are facing a tsunami of dementia.”
Also speaking at the conference was Dr Simon Opher, Chair of the Beyond Pills All Party Parliamentary Group, a practising GP and also Labour MP for Stroud, who raised concerns about the “over-medicalisation” of mental ill health.
“Antidepressants can help some people – but they are being vastly overprescribed,” he told the Sunday Express. “We’re putting people on heavy medication for dubious reasons. GPs are under pressure with just ten-minute consultations, which are useless for complex mental health cases. Many doctors feel forced to prescribe, but these drugs can be extremely difficult to withdraw from, and side effects can include suicidal thoughts.”
More than 8.6 million adults and over 500,000 children were prescribed an antidepressant prescription in the past year, NHS data shows.
Prescriptions for under-18s in England have spiralled in the last decade – from 312,000 in 2015-16 to 448,515 in 2022-23.
Last year, 3,920 of those were given to children under the age of ten.
Dr Dixon, a Devon GP and long-time advocate of “social prescribing”, criticised the current NHS model as outdated and ineffective: “It’s too hit-and-miss, too confined to a symptom or a body part – and it’s failing.”
Instead, he argued for a seismic shift toward personalised care that harnesses everything from nutrition and dance to community volunteering and kindness. “It’s time we rejected transactional medicine and embraced something more hopeful – medicine in colour,” he said. “That includes a walk in the park, a chat with a friend, even just turning off the mobile phone. Love and relationships are medicine too.”
Citing examples from across the UK, Dr Dixon praised GPs who have stepped outside the box – including Dr David Unwin, who has helped a third of his diabetic patients come off medication through diet and lifestyle changes, and Dr James Fleming, who replaced antidepressants with job support.
He also lauded the Frome model in Somerset, where over 2,000 locals – from hairdressers to students – have become “community connectors” to tackle loneliness and ill health.
“Medicine that inspires and empowers – that’s Personal Medicine,” he said. “It gives power back to people, not bureaucrats. It respects our personal stories, our culture, our hopes. And it’s already happening.”
Known for championing complementary and integrative medicine, Dr Dixon has previously called the NHS’s dependence on pills and procedures “unsustainable.” He said: “We are over-medicating and undertreating the real issues that affect people’s wellbeing.”
He called on doctors, nurses and health leaders to liberate themselves from the “rat runs of protocols and care pathways.”
“No longer need they be mindless automatons churning out received wisdom. It allows them to tick that box that says ‘I am not a robot,’” he will say.
Calling the new wave of medicine “intelligent, creative and joyful,” he said it could help tackle not just poor health, but workforce inactivity and long NHS waiting lists. “It’s time to stop mopping the floor and turn off the taps that are overflowing the basin,” he said.
The Beyond Pills conference was held at the QEII Centre Westminster from 19th – 21st June 2025 where clinicians, researchers and community leaders explored new ways of personalising healthcare.