When similar standards of diagnosis are used across countries, they find similar rates of ailment. The difference is that the criteria for diagnosis in the US c

When similar standards of diagnosis are used across countries, they find similar rates of ailment. The difference is that the criteria for diagnosis in the US catches a much larger percentage of the population. Moreover, the US is also much more likely to use pharmaceuticals as the front-line treatment to any ADHD diagnosis. Really, my concern isn't about children who would be diagnosed either way, or who unambiguously need pharmaceutical treatment (who exist in all areas). It's about the marginal cases where pharmaceuticals may not be warranted. It would be dreadful to administer chemotherapy drugs to patients who got a false-positive on a cancer screening (cancer is not a spectrum, but I'll run with your analogy). And as I said in another comment, skepticism of the long-term use of this medication in young children does not at all mean advocacy of non-treatment, non-intervention, or lack of support for children at the margins of the ADHD spectrum.