this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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Well no, what's happening to you is also because of the general culture of overmedication. If there were less false positives, people wouldn't distrust your diagnosis. If anything, I'd argue the current culture hurts the people who have serious issues more than the people who have been given a shoddy diagnosis in order to peddle drugs, but both sides are pretty rough.
Did you come to this conclusion by talking to diagnosed people? Because even in the decades where it was massively under diagnosed, I don’t think there’s any time period I could point to and say ‘oh yeah, nobody questions autism diagnoses because they’re so rare!’ It just changes what they say: ‘oh, are you sure? That’s so rare, it’s probably something else!’
I have experienced both sides of this over the decades, and as far as I’m concerned I’d rather cast too wide a net than too small of one, because at least that way more people that need support get it. Being told you’re making it up sucks ass no matter which direction it’s coming from.
You hear people say the same thing about fake service dogs, but they only ever wind up harassing anyone with a service dog because they think it’s their responsibility to be a disability cop.
Also so often attempts to crack down on overdiagnosis winds up hurting those of us who definitely have it. I can't function without stimulants, I've tried, there were car crashes and kitchen fires. Every wave of "it's overdiagnosed" means now I'm stuck calling every pharmacy in town every month and struggling to find doctors willing to even consider treating adhd in my network.