I'm dyslexic, I have a daughter being tested for autism this month. I want the diagnosis to help better understand her and help her adjust to have a happy life. She isn't even that bad, she has cousins that are far worse, but they are still all autistic (in my daughter's case, still probable). Some autistics kids can't talk, I have a cousin who is very autistic but can drive to work. Another just gets panic attacks. The range and scope is huge.
The reason I ask is because if you don't, then it would seem your family tree actually supports the over-diagnosis theory. To check on this, I did a quick lookup. One source says the prevalence is 1 in every 88 children in the US.
Are her cousins just "more different" in your mind, or do you think perhaps that certain "differences" are indeed bad?
Once I knew what the hell was actually going on I could then take steps to fix it correctly, scientifically, using proven methodology and techniques that worked for me. Instead of just throwing whatever at the wall and seeing what stuck I was seeking treatment that was targeted at exactly my issue and I could connect with others that were going through or who had gone through therapy for BED and who could relate to what I had gone through/was going through.
Being able to name what's going on is an enormously powerful moment. Look at all the stories of people who have had some mystery illness or cancer or some rare diagnosis: they all talk about the relief they felt when they finally were diagnosed, even if the diagnosis was grim or didn't have an available treatment. There's a huge relief in knowing because then you have a starting point, somewhere to begin from, somewhere to rally yourself and set out away from, somewhere to call your personal "ground zero".
Seriously the mess that is psychiatry is going to take another 50 years to clean up+. It's problems are part of the academic madness that took hold after WWII when every field decided it needed to be 'a science' and tossed out all the ad-hoc knowledge and went straight to theory.
+ Like all fields that ran amuck the current guardians of the truth in psychiatry ain't going to change their minds. So progress is measured in funerals.