RETHINKING MODERN NEURODIVERSITY LANGUAGE

New research uncovers irritation, comfort and nuance in how neurodivergent people relate to widely used labels

- In the survey — by Aimee Grant (associate professor in Public Health and Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow, Swansea University), Amy Pearson (assistant professor in psychology, Durham University) and Jennifer Leigh (honorary professor of chemistry, University of Liverpool)

The term “neurodiversity” is still relatively new. Even now, there’s no firm agreement among experts about what it should include. Does it refer only to neurodevelopmental differences such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia? Or should it stretch further, to include mental health conditions too?

Until recently, no one had asked neurodivergent people themselves what they thought about the language used to describe them. So, a team of researchers decided to do just that and their research found a mixture of positive and negative views about words like “neurodiversity” and “neurodivergent”.

Neurodiversity refers to the different ways in which people think and behave. Just as everyone has an ethnicity, everyone has a neurotype. Around 15 per cent of people are thought to be neurodivergent, meaning their brains function differently from what society considers “typical”. The remaining 85 per cent are neurotypical.