Psychiatric diagnoses in the United States are rising across virtually every category, in every age group. According to the National Institutes of Mental Health, more than one in five US adults—59.3 million people—lived with a mental illness in 2022. An estimated 49.5 percent of American adolescents have met diagnostic criteria for at least one mental disorder at some point in their lifetime.
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Defenders of modern psychiatry often claim that expanding diagnostic criteria reflect better screening, capturing subtler presentations, and that rising diagnoses reflect more accurate assessments of the true population prevalence of mental illness. But aside from the grim forecasts of living in a world where half of all young people have experienced mental illness, there is reason to believe that psychiatric diagnoses have become less precise, not more.
None of this diminishes the reality of autism, ADHD, or anxiety disorders for individuals with significant functional impairment. But when the boundaries of diagnosis are inherently subjective, and when diagnosis is the key that unlocks streams of taxpayer-funded services, the system will predictably expand those boundaries.
