Neurodivergence

Neurodiversity recognises that not all brains work the same way. The most common cluster of brain types is called Neurotypical (neurologically typical), as it is more typical to come across them. Neurodivergence points out that not all brains are typical, which has behaviour and experience differences inherent in those differences. Neurodivergent mostly refers to the cohorts that are not part of the mainstream typical part of the population.

All of our thoughts, feelings and behaviours are driven by our brain on a background of our biology. If our brain is notably different, then our thoughts, feelings and behaviour can be notably different. In a society that is optimised for the most common brain type, having a different brain type can create socially created exclusions which can be disabling.

Neurological differences can lead some people to have both better than average ability and lower than average ability in various things. Due to the nature of our society and medical system, we tend to over focus on the lower than average ability, which biases perception about Neurodivergent people to only be disabled. Different doesn’t mean broken.

Some of the neurologically driven difficulties are disabling, but not all people in the category will find that inherently disabling either – we need to look at the individual’s person’s experience. Unfortunately, the diagnostic criteria for a medical diagnosis often requires the person to be struggling enough to be effectively considered disabled, and that has a consequence both to the perception of the diagnosis that is not fair, but also to people whose experience and identity is described by the category.

For example, in former years you might be diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, where it was recognised that you had an Autistic Brain but did not have either an intellectual disability or a disability due to Autism traits – that is, non disabled Autism. Asperger’s Syndrome was rolled into the new definition of Autism Spectrum Disorder (for those using the USA DSM system), whose diagnostic criteria requires you to have significant deficits in social traits and two other non-social traits. Many diagnosticians do not tend to agree that you have sufficient deficits unless you are effectively disabled in that criteria, leading to Autism now being mostly diagnosed only if you are Autistic enough to be considered disabled, which erases the prior Asperger’s Syndrome pathway to having your Autistic brain recognised.

Take a look to the green box “Neurodivergent Categories” to get links to our Neurodivergent Categories (these are the ones we have written about, more exist).