(Wall Street Journal) – The swift rise in diagnoses for everything from autism to ADHD may be doing more harm than good.

What all of these diagnoses have in common is that they all have a severe form with a demonstrable pathology, like a genetic or biochemical abnormality, that’s been recognized for decades, but have expanded in the past 20 to 30 years to include mild cases with no proven pathology. While there has been no real change in the share of people suffering from the severe form of these diseases, sufferers with the milder form have shot up dramatically. For example autism diagnoses in the U.K., where I work, rose by 787% between 1998 and 2018.

Because the line now between normal and abnormal for these diagnoses is often faint, some physicians fear that these labels pathologize healthy bodies, particularly in young people. (Read More)