> There are very hard criteria for an diagnosis and it requires that every other explanation for the behavior is excluded before a diagnosis can be made.

Is this standard truly being upheld? Most stories I've heard from people in US & UK go something like "I filled out some forms, hopped on a call/saw a psychiatrist for 30-60 minutes and walked out with a diagnosis and a prescription". Sometimes people even joke about how their psychiatrist talked to them for 10 minutes and concluded that they definitely have ADHD, and while that might be the case, it doesn't seem like many professionals are being particularly thorough about the differential diagnosis and ruling out other causes.

Personally I had to undergo relatively rigorous testing where they went through my entire medical history and administered about a dozen different neuropsychological tests which took about 5 hours total, over 2 months, multiple appointments, and then another month for them to analyze everything and come back to me with the diagnosis.

Of course that doesn't mean that ADHD is overdiagnosed or that those diagnoses are wrong, but it doesn't seem like many places are being as rigorous as they're supposed to be? Am I missing anything?

I don't really know the situation in the US. Here in Germany it is for sure rigorous.

I had three appointments and lots of questionnaires to fill out at home that were designed to exclude all kind of conditions. And with a diagnosis I was still far away from getting a prescription, that is whole other hurdle.

As for the US, well the CDC says in the section for conditions that must be met:

> The symptoms are not better explained by another mental disorder (such as a mood disorder, anxiety disorder, dissociative disorder, or a personality disorder). The symptoms do not happen only during the course of schizophrenia or another psychotic disorder.

https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/diagnosis/index.html

So it is pretty clear on that.

“Prescription”?