What autistic people – and those with ADHD and dyslexia – really think about the word ‘neurodiversity’

We would like to thank Aimee Grant|Amy Pearson|Jennifer Leigh for the contribution to this article.

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, we decided to do just that. Our new 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