The conversation is growing. The underlying signals are not moving in sync.
Mental-health language, public attention, diagnosis, treatment, and care can rise together, split apart, or move in opposite directions. This research program follows those differences without treating any one source as the whole truth.
What people seek, discuss, and try to understand.
What defensible diagnosis or condition proxies suggest.
What prescription and care signals reveal when they are comparable.
What the sources can support, and where they remain silent.
When attention changes, what else changes with it?
The answer is descriptive, not causal. These sources can show alignment and divergence. They cannot, on their own, explain why either occurred.
Three rules for reading the evidence.
Separate attention from prevalence. A topic can become more visible without becoming more common.
Check the population and year. National estimates often describe different ages, definitions, and periods.
Treat disagreement as information. When signals diverge, the gap is a question to investigate, not a conclusion to disguise.