I agree with many of the points made here, but it seems to be painting the picture with far too broad a brush. For one, it ignores the fact that millions of youth have been helped by receiving a diagnosis and an appropriate treatment, as indicated by the diagnosis, including talking therapies, medications, and other approaches.

Secondly, it ignores plenty of data. There are more than thirty studies comparing children with ADHD who were treated with stimulant medications, to kids with ADHD who were not treated with stimulants. In virtually every study, by the end of adolescence, the brains of the kids who were treated with stimulants looked closer to normal than the kids who went untreated. That suggests that not taking medications may be consigning many of these individuals to a lifetime of mental health challenges.

There certainly are health risks to stimulants, and they should only be administered after a thorough evaluation, and consistently monitored. But without making diagnoses, we don't know who is likely to be helped and who is not likely to be helped by any intervention.

Our current system has many flaws, and I think needs to be fundamentally changed, but for right now, we should be working to improve it rather than throw it out completely, because millions of people are already being treated and it would be both unethical and ridiculous to tell all of them, oh well, we have to throw every treatment plan out, until we get everything right. https://medium.com/wise-well/our-psychiatric-diagnoses-arent-perfect-but-misusing-labels-makes-it-worse-5bffa159f86d