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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Mental health diagnoses absolutely follow trends - a lot of time driven by the medication that can be prescribed. All of these adults suddenly discovering they have ADHD are being misdiagnosed/overdiagnosed. And a lot of kids too. This is now the trendy self-diagnosis for adults - up to a few years ago it was autism. before that it was bipolar (especially in kids). And then think of all the women diagnosed with “hysteria” in the 50s-60s and given sedatives.

You would think it wasn’t a big deal but stimulant meds actually can have serious side effects. More importantly, diagnosing everything as ADHD can end up obscuring actual diagnoses that need to be treated, such as personality disorders. [/quote]

Bumping this post because I agree.

Also one reason I have a problem with all these bogus "adult onset" ADHD diagnoses is that I think in many cases it's people who are reacting to the way our culture expects an unreasonable level of functioning from people, especially parents. They don't have ADHD, it's just actually hard-to-impossible for a person to do everything they need to do at work (especially a challenging job with a lot of responsibility) and as a parent (with escalating expectations for "intensive parenting") and also navigate ever more complicated technology, in a society with increasing income inequality (making the prospect of downgrading your career or letting your kids coast scary) and political upheaval (contributing to overall stress and a loss of control over your circumstances). That's just hard! A lot of people are struggling. Even high functioning people who don't have ADHD and who were able to handle, say, a challenging academic career and a tough job.

When people like this suddenly have ADHD and use stimulant medication to deal with what are actually really unrealistic expectations, it just normalizes that this is how life is. What are we supposed to do, put everyone on ADHD medication? What if instead we started confronting the fact that a lot of employers expect responsiveness 24/7 and the toll that takes on someone's ability to focus on their private life or relax on vacation? What of we confronted the social expectations for parenting and the way they are throttling childhood, keeping kids from becoming more independent, causing anxiety on all sides, and not actually resulting in better adult outcomes? What if we questioned whether the current economic model in the US, which requires two parents working full time jobs while kids spend 10 hours a day in school and childcare and true leisure time is squeezed into increasingly smaller time windows, is really a sustainable model?

Nevermind, here is your ADHD diagnosis and a scrip for some medication that will make it possible for you to navigate all that a little bit longer. Good luck![/quote]

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