Neurodiversity Research and Resources

1. Use Truncation

Truncation is a good strategy to expand your search hits when looking for resources. Putting an asterisk (*) at the end of a word or acronym will fill in different endings for it. For example, Canad* will find Canadian, Canadians, and Canada. Because different authors may use different terms, you can search for autis* to find autism and autistic, or schiz* to find schizophrenia, schizophrenic, "schizo" (considered a slur by some in the community, but also used as an informal expression by some), as well as other related terms.

2. Consider the Past

A commonly used term online or in disability and neurodivergent advocacy groups, or historical terminology that is no longer current, may not be used in academic literature. For example, what might be called "autism" today was called "Asperger's," "childhood disintegrative disorder," or "infantile schizophrenia" in the past. If you cannot find the information you are looking for, think about other ways that the concept might be discussed, even if it is not the generally accepted terminology.

3. Consider the Source

The resources you find will often be split along the lines of the medical or neurodiversity models, which tend to use different language and seek to achieve different goals. Like with many studies that focus on marginalized groups, neurodiversity is a political concept and so what qualifies as an "authoritative source" will differ depending on whether or not you want to focus on a clinical description or the individual's experience.

On social media, hashtags like #actuallyautistic, #actuallyADHD, #actuallyDID, etc. are sometimes used to indicate whether one is speaking about neurodivergence from an own-voice perspective, but any single own-voice perspective will not necessarily represent the community as a whole.