A broadening of what constitutes as mental disorder is more to blame imo.

What is the process for diagnosing a mental disorder? I feel like it could just be people feeling stressed that are getting diagnosed with a disorder. But I don't know if there is a way to externally tell if someone has a mental problem.

Doesn't really surprise me. I've suffered with depression since I was 9 years old and never told anyone about it growing up.

What about this?

I personally feel disorder is the wrong word, it implies there is something fundamentally wrong with the psyche. Many such disorders are not flaws, just alternate ways of thinking. Hell, a lot of famous people have mental disorders.

I knew kids in college that wanted ADD/ADHD medication for studying purposes that just faked some symptoms for a prescription. Took all of five minutes. Far as I'm concerned, if you can bullshit your way into a prescription the testing and requirements for it are too vague or the doctors too lenient in writing their prescriptions.

Over diagnosis, and broadening of what constitutes a mental disorder is to blame for this.

I don't know what it is, but we need to broaden our definition of "normal." Expecting people to have a perfect, textbook example brain is completely unrealistic.

I always feel weird when they go into explaining a mental disorder and then I realize that I fit some of the symptoms but i've never been diagnosed as mentally disordered. What are the chances that theyre labeling kids mental when theyre actually normal, but then they grow up thinking theyre mental so they actaully become mental. Honestly I don't think a child should be diagnosed with a mental disorder until he/she is the age of 7/8 or its VERY CLEAR that they have something.

"1: Is this an actual "increase" or are we/doctors just getting better at diagnosis?" Or are they just more eager to label someone that might just be a normal kid?

they're coming up with more "illnesses" for kids every year instead of just calling kids little bas­tards like most of them are

[quote][url=http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/16/us-usa-health-children-idUSBRE94F11N20130516]Up to 20 percent of children in the United States suffer from a mental disorder, and the number of kids diagnosed with one has been rising for more than a decade, according to a report released on Thursday by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.[/url] Which leads me to this (or these) question(s). 1: Is this an actual "increase" or are we/doctors just getting better at diagnosis? 2: Was the rate of disorders the same previously, but we just labeled the kids as "difficult", "spoiled", "acting out"? 3: If the rate of "disorders" is a significant fraction, could it be that we're too narrowly defining what is "normal" or "healthy"? It tends to remind me of an old saying that I heard when I was young. "Just because the doctor has a name for your condition, that doesn't mean that they know what is wrong with you or that they can do anything about it."[/quote] I'm leaning more towards kids sitting in the grey areas between full blown conditions and normal kids who may have a range of symptoms. The world isn't black and white, it's a thousand shades of grey. They are technically being labeled as ADHD or whatever even though he's not the definition of an ADHD kid. I myself suffer from OCD. It's extremely mild and I don't bother treating it. It mainly just manifests itself me being a completionist, to a rather extreme sense of the word and worrying about trivial things. My uncle on my mothers side however had the full monty. Habitual hand washing, fear of leaving the house.

This is total BS. There is no way 20% of US children have mental disorders. Does anybody know that a temper tantrum is now a candidate for a possible mental disorder? Are there even any boundaries on what can be classified as a disorder?

There is always the case where parents just want to med-up there kids. Happens a lot around where I live.

What used to be a naughty child who got a smack is now a kid with ADHD who needs Ritalin. 'Disorders' are a joke in my opinion, the overdiagnosis and a name for every condition game is getting more and more absurd. It makes it harder for people who do genuinely need help to get it because the waiting lists are clogged with these Pseudo-Illnesses. It's like stuffing everyone with a common cold onto the Lung Cancer waiting list for a transplant. However, it is good that diagnosing a Mental Illness has become easier for doctors and that society is not so prejudiced against people who are ill. It's like how depression rates in women are 3 to 4 times higher than in men, possibly because of a predisposition or more likely because men are expected to buck it up and carry on. More men are going to the doctor about it and so people who used to suffer in silence are now seeking help. Now there are genuine cases of ADHD and Dyslexia/Dyspraxia which do need treating/assistance but they are far less common than the large number of those diagnosed. Another point i'd put in would be the rapidly changing world, people use more computers and mobiles and the absurd amount of pressure to succeed from schools cannot be doing children any good, so it could be that rates genuinely are increasing and there needs to be a serious look at the way the world works because what happens if 20% of the population end up incapacitated by mental illness, then another 20% are OAPs and there becomes a diminishing amount of functioning humans left to take care of everyone else.

[url=http://youtu.be/hIw_rqlwm0M?t=3m45s]American Schools[/url]

So how much of that percent are children that actually have a mental disorder? The amount of misdiagnosis's today is ridiculous.

More and more kids are going to psychiatrists nowadays. It's actually staring to become the norm to see one. I can't count the number of people I know that take medication, and it literally makes them feel more accepted because they have some 'condition' like the everyone else. "I'm bipolar. I have mood swings." "I have anxiety, I feel edgy." "I might be schizophrenic, I'm paranoid all the time" A lot of these people seem to exaggerate their 'symptoms.' They turn this kind of thing into a contest. Which is beyond me. I know someone who has legit bipolar disorder and schizophrenia (I've been attacked by this person, not in their right mind.), and someone who has severe anxiety. And the way they act is vastly different from how these people I see claiming to have disorders act. I can't account for everyone I see, I'm not [i]that[/i] involved in their lives. But I can at least get a sense of someone claiming that they're bipolar when they're just slightly emotional about something. I've seen the real thing and they usually don't live up to it.

I think that's about right. It seems that a lot of people I know have ADHD in one form or another. And almost every young kid I know has it.

I am that 1 child.

I think the truth is that people are getting overzealous with making up disorders, claiming that a bunch of normal things are disorders when they are not. I say lots of perfectly normal people are being diagnosed with nonexistent disorders.