Neurodiversity is Not the medical model!

I just left a ‘neurodiversity’ research webinar because it was the co-opted, medical model version of neurodiversity, where apparently there’s debate what counts as neurodivergence.

There is no debate. The term has a definition: any brain that diverges from typical. Mental illness. Acquired brain injury. Neurodevelopmental. Etc.

It’s deliberately a non-pathologising term for those differences, which means you can’t use neurodiverse ‘disorder’ or ‘condition’ as phrasing.

This really winds me up, and is everything I don’t want to be as a researcher, activist, or neurodivergent person.