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Welcome to the Neurodiversity Guide. This page is still under construction, so some sections may still be blank. If you have any suggestions for this page, please email me at bemitchell@tru.ca
What is Neurodiversity?
The idea that neurological diversity is a fundamental part of human diversity was developed in autistic online spaces in the 1990s (A correction on the origin of the term ‘neurodiversity’) and was eventually shortened to the term neurodiversity. Just as biodiversity is a measure of ecological richness, neurodiversity reflects the range of ways brains and nervous systems can differ from person to person and the cultural and social meaning we give to such differences.
Someone whose neurological arrangement differs from the socially normative is neurodivergent. A person can be born neurodivergent, or become so later in life through illness or accident. While the term neurodiversity emerged from the Autistic community, it is a broader idea that embraces a range of neurological differences from ADHD, dyslexia and dyspraxia to bipolarity, schizophrenia, PTSD, Down syndrome, and more.
Neurodiversity is based on the social model of disability. This model argues that while functional impairments are real, disability as a category is not contained in the individual specifically, but in the individual’s relationship to their social and physical environments. A common example is how people who need glasses are disabled, but are often not considered to be because of the widespread availability of assistive technologies (in this case, glasses or contact lenses).
The social model is often contrasted to the medical model of disability. In this model people who are not “normal” are considered to be deficient, sick, damaged, or otherwise lacking as individuals regardless of their environmental or social contexts. The medical model tends to place more emphasis on curing people, bringing them back to an idealised physiological “normal,” than on understanding divergent ways of thinking and being or providing social supports for those outside of the norm.
Most proponents of neurodiversity acknowledge that neurodivergent people are disabled and that not every aspect of their experience is something that they would choose (a classic example being the frequent digestive issues that often co-occur with autism). The differences in the social and medical models of disability are sometimes blurred, and as with any marginalised community, there are different viewpoints from within the neurodiversity movement itself.
Neurodiversity studies is the interdisciplinary study of neurodiversity that brings together fields like critical disability and autism studies, “mad studies,” the humanities and social sciences, psychology, social work, occupational therapy, nursing, education, and others to understand how neurological difference is experienced, perceived, and treated in cultural context. Its stated goals tend to emphasize human, civil, and patients' rights, mutual aid, and individual or collective autonomy.