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I think there's a bit of both, really. Things are overdiagnosed at times, but at the same time there is a greater understanding of mental illness that could also contribute to higher rates.

While I can't speak to most teens in the US that are diagnosed with bipolar, my best friend in middle school was. I don't think it was someone just over diagnosing and slapping a label on her. I also don't think her sister's diagnosis of schizophrenia was an over diagnosis. I don't think my own diagnoses are wrong (I've had the same ones since I was pre-18), although I am pretty sure a psychiatrist at one point pre-age 15 thought I was bipolar (I only say this due to the meds that particular one put me on), and I'm pretty sure that was wrong seeing as I was never diagnosed bipolar before or after that psychiatrist.

However, on the other end of things, when I was in residential treatment (in the US), there was a girl that was there that I swear did not seem to have any real mental health disorder. She seemed like any other 11 year old girl, maybe with ADHD, but nothing that I would consider out of the ordinary in terms of behaviors at all, and I lived with her 24/7 for the over 6 months she was there. She had been to a wilderness program before coming to the treatment center, so for a really young kid, she was away from home for a very long time. I honestly do not know why she was there to this day. Yes, she was rambunctious and probably hard to handle, but I really did not see anything in her behavior or from talking to her that indicated something was wrong mentally.

However my thoughts on what can get a young person sent to residential treatment in the US are probably a whole different topic, really, because they don't necessarily all require a diagnosis of a mental health disorder to send you to one.