How do you feel about fad diagnoses?

I was diagnosed with ADD (then ADHD) back in the early ‘90s. So were a whole lot of kids throughout the decade. Now, it seems the diagnosis du jour is autism.

Part of me feels like these diagnoses are merely relabelling the same behavioral symptoms or a push from the pharmaceuticals to sell product.

Or maybe it’s just that zeitgeist has focused on these diseases during these periods, so there’s a hypersensitivity to them.

I can’t, however, reconcile my negative doubts with the fact the my diagnosis, even though I am no longer managing my ADD through medication, profoundly improved my life. I cannot say for certain if the medication helped, since the benefits I had in school were marred by side effects that took me ten years to understand, but the diagnosis was profoundly helpful to me.

How do you feel about this?