It really does feel like I was bred in a lab to exist as the counterexample for all this. I was diagnosed with ADHD in middle school and my parents thought exactly as you did and refused treatment. For a long time I held this as a point of pride and thought of my parents as saving me from those cruel teachers that just wanted to keep me down, any why would I question them? I have no other frame of reference and was marked "different" by my teachers and other kids so all of my struggles were just framed in terms of that. And so it went with my anxiety and depression, I didn't have an illness, I was a worrier that just needed to calm down. I didn't have depression I was lazy, angsty, and logical -- that's why I didn't get out of bed all day, thought everything sucked and existence was pain, and so numb I could give Spock a run for his money.

Fast forward to college where I was getting my annual checkup and flu shot and I got my first ever mental health questionnaire. I answered honestly because at the time I genuinely thought that my experience wasn't unusual -- "Doesn't everyone think about killing themselves all the time?" I got referred to a therapist and eventually a psychiatrist for confirmation (because teaching hospital) who both didn't even take an hour to be clock me with all three. I got put on an antidepressant, an anti-anxiety, and a stimulant over the course of about a year and a half and I felt something and then cried for the first time since sixth grade, realized what not having anxiety feels like, and what life is like when you're not constantly in pain from under-stimulation.

I just can't bring myself to think it's all quack science when I was so thoroughly dressed down by these two guys so fast and who took a little less than two years to get them all sorted. It was surreal when the psychiatrist just described my whole life experience without even missing a beat. Life changing undersells it so much and it came out of literally nowhere for me.