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Is ADHD over diagnosed?
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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As medicine advances, most diseases or conditions will be diagnosed more often. With the extreme increase in technology in the past 50+ years I wouldn't say that cancer is being over diagnosed just because we can find it better. While mental health science is arguably far behind traditional medicine, I wouldn't say that ADHD as a whole is over diagnosed. Is it probable that there are some bad doctors that will simply hand wave kids away with an ADHD diagnosis? Sure but those cases are far less common than you might think. As someone with ADHD I have seen the sentiment that it is over diagnosed arise in my life as people claiming that what I suffer from isn't real and I need to pay attention better, or that I'm just "abusing the Adderall to get ahead in life." So no I don't think it is over diagnosed and people around the world need to have a better understanding of how mental illness truly affects the people that suffer.
I've always been fascinated how ADHD is the disorder that gets singled out for over diagnosis but not ASD.
AFAIK there's not much in the way of pharma treatments for ASD so public policy couldn't care less about it.
There's money to be made in demonizing ADHD.
Forgive my naivety, how do you get rich off demonising adhd? It would stand to reason that bucks are made by over diagnosing and selling superfluous treatment, what would I sell you after adhd is demonised?
You gotta think diabolically.
My psychiatrist here in Australia cautioned me when doing online research into different ADHD medications to check the country of origin and avoid American sources where possible, as there is a huge anti-drug bias in US public and medical literature, and to stick to European/Australasian/other resources for more accurate information on mechanism of action and potential side-effects.
Boy, he was not wrong. If you go on many American websites that talk about the pros and cons of one stimulant or another, it'll overemphasise its propensity towards abuse and extensively list the side effects without bothering to explain how the drug actually works in the body.
You'll think it's an unbiased source, at first, because the website itself only seem to contain basic drug information (at a cursory glance) only to scroll to the bottom and find that the website is owned/sponsored by a rehab facility, of all places.
It'd seem like there's money to be made off of dx and prescribing ADHD meds, but we all know how fucking hard it is to dx'd in the first place, let alone prescribed something that works. It's not wildly profitable to prescribe drugs with heavy federal restrictions on it.
What is profitable, however, is to give someone 6 other psychiatric medications to treat ongoing mental health issues from undiagnosed ADHD, and the half dozen other co-morbid issues like substance abuse disorders, PTSD, anxiety/depression, bipolar disorders, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and so on- none of which you'll get much traction in treating without also addressing ADHD, and some of which may be misdiagnosed or more effectively treated when identifying the core disorder.
Why treat 1 condition when you can treat 7 ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Better yet, you can do that in an inpatient facility that their insurance can pay for, where you can convince them that their substance abuse issues are due to moral failing rather than an attempt at self-medicating a (widely speaking) treatable disorder, yet hypocritically prescribe them a cocktail of other psychiatric medications for their "moral failing".
That being said, I'm not saying all rehab facilities are bad or operate in this manner, but it is just one of many ways that the medical and pharmaceutical industry inadvertently or directly discourages appropriate ADHD treatment, additionally fuelled by the government's bigotry-fuelled war on drugs.
Jesus man. Thanks for the reply.