Of the two attitudes, only one ensures that those who
do suffer from ADHD aren't able to receive treatment. Misdiagnosis, when it occurs, is able to be handled on a case-by-case basis; the "no such thing" stigmatization and other similar lines of reasoning, on the other hand, are a priori positions that reinforce biases that actively work against those who are seeking treatment and those who should but aren't, and as a result, directly contributes to underdiagnosis.
No one looks at increases in cancer rates and decries them as an rising tide of overdiagnoses. Only when talking about mental health can people get away with this sort of shoddy reasoning. A few points:
First, the argument itself is faulty. By their very nature, diagnosis rates aren't able to support conclusions in either direction on the matter. An increase in diagnoses is not the same as an increase in misdiagnoses. There are multiple significant factors that can contribute to an increase in diagnoses over time (i.e. heightened awareness, decreased in stigma that would otherwise have prevented the patient from seeking treatment, better diagnostic tools, properly recognizing edge cases where ADHD was previously misdiagnosed, etc.). We've seen similar things with other illnesses as well.
Simply put, the question that you're trying to raise (but aren't) is more nuanced: what percentage of those diagnosed do not meet the diagnostic criteria? The two questions are quite distinct.
Second, we're not exactly working from a comparable baseline when we look towards previous years. Consider factors such as a broader recognition of ADHD symptoms, openness to not simply writing those same symptoms off as "that's the way the world works" or "kids will will be kids", and relative decreases in stigmatization of ADHD itself (e.g. "ok, this is different from those really bad disorders like... schizophrenia [gasp]"). Net result, increased visibility which damn well ought to lead to increases in overall numbers just as it would for any diagnosis, psychological or otherwise.
Third, there isn't much scientific evidence to support the idea that ADHD is overdiagnosed. Even in cases where patients don't meet the diagnostic criteria, there's a growing body of evidence that they nevertheless exhibit more symptoms than average. So even in those cases, they're quite different than your idealized vision of regular kids being fed a daily diet of all the psychopharmaceuticals they can swallow. If you're interested, here are a few articles you can start off from:
- http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/play2.html
- http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/adhd/problems-overdiagnosis-...
- http://jad.sagepub.com/content/11/2/106.abstract
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22956714
Anyhow, mental illness--regrettably--has a nasty assortment of baggage. For centuries the mentally ill were criminalized, marginalized, and locked away. Crazy or not crazy. And though we've moved away from a great deal of the worst of these excesses, many of them are still with us. Maybe one day we'll get our heads out of our collective asses.