Hi Nyk.... no problem with being argumentative even if you don't want to be - there's nothing wrong with it at all. This discussion with the Garrulous Glaswegian is over six months old, so I can't remember all the context.

Let's deal with your latter point first. The rise in ADHD cases pretty much ties in with what you've said. If the education system isn't fit for purpose, then either the kids are wrong or the system is wrong - and it's much cheaper and more lucrative to pathologist the kids. Sir Ken Robinson was outlining this years and years ago - and we still haven't caught up.

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/publications/rq_docs/V32N2.pdf

That's probably the best go to place for the answer to your question. In short, psychologists can't really decide how to define PTSD and so they're playing with the diagnostic criteria. The resultant confusion now mean that the word 'trauma' is being mis-applied by the general public and endorsed more widely by well-meaning professionals. The word 'traumatised' has ceased to mean what it once meant.

Most of my CBT therapist friends have young patients arrive proudly announcing they've got 'mild PTSD' from some sort of friendship based fallout. Someone has used the wrong pronouns etc. What they have is anxiety. The DSM classification requires:

The person was exposed to: death, threatened death, actual or threatened serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence. In the following ways:

Direct exposure

Witnessing the trauma

Learning that a relative or close friend was exposed to a trauma

Indirect exposure to aversive details of the trauma, usually in the course of professional duties (e.g., first responders, medics)

When you overlay this across what many people claim as 'trauma' you realise that the initial 'trauma' isn't really trauma, and therefore the often lay-diagnosed 'PTSD' cannot be that either - but once people have their labels, even if they're self implied, they're very reluctant to give them up. :o)