Embrace being different

In March, Mr Edwin Tong, who was then Second Minister for Law (now Minister for Law) launched a multi-agency task force to support people with invisible disabilities within the justice system.

- Daniel Fung

One story shared at the event was especially harrowing: a young girl with autism, incarcerated at the Singapore Girls' Home after a violent outburst, had attempted suicide. It was a painful reminder that when systems do not understand neurodiversity, vulnerable individuals can fall through the cracks, with tragic consequences.

Today, there is a growing awareness that not all minds work the same way. This is known as neurodivergence. Once confined to academic and activist circles, this term has entered mainstream discourse, often used by young people and their families to describe conditions such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, dyspraxia, Tourette syndrome, and more.

The central idea is simple, yet radical. These are not "disorders" or even "disabilities" to be fixed, but natural variations of the human brain, differences in how we learn, focus, move, socialize, or experience the world.

This shift in framing has significant implications not only for psychiatry and education, but increasingly also for our legal system.

As a psychiatrist, I find myself often navigating a double bind. On the one hand, psychiatric classification systems such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) by the American Psychiatric Association and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) by the World Health Organization—which classify many of these differences as disorders—are an essential pillar of clinical work.

They help us define conditions, guide treatment, and organize access to services. These frameworks, based on observable patterns of dysfunction or distress, are vital in ensuring clinical consistency and insurance coverage.

However, these same systems, designed for a medical model, can unintentionally pathologize difference.