Unfortunately, ABA often hurts autistic children, who are trained to repress their autistic behaviors and may grow up with psychological damage as a result of ABA therapies. As such, these disabilities, including neurological conditions such as autism and ADHD, are inherently bad and should be treated or “cured.” For example, although there is no cure that exists for autism, upon their child receiving an autism diagnosis, parents often seek applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapies, supplements, and other autism “treatments” so that autistic behaviors are reduced or eliminated. The medical model of disability asserts that people are impaired by their disabilities. The idea of neurodiversity comes from the social model of disability, rather than the medical model of disability, which continues to dominate discourse about disabilities. Because much of the discourse back then, and even today, is on the medical model of disability, or treating neurological conditions as diseases, disorders, and deficits, Singer sought to change that and recognize the aspects of disability that are beneficial to society, and neurodiversity advocates today argue that neurodiversity should be celebrated and respected as cultural and ethnic diversity would be. The term, neurodiversity was coined by a sociologist named, Judy Singer, who is autistic herself, on September 30th, 1998. Rather than being neurotypical, or having a typically developed brain, neurodiverse people have a brain that is uniquely wired, and allows them to view the world differently than a neurotypical person would.

Some other examples of neurodiversity are bipolar disorder, dyslexia, dyscalculia, schizophrenia and tourette syndrome, among others. Neurodiversity is the idea that neurological differences, such as autism and ADHD, are the result of variation in the human genome. Neurodiversity simply means diversity of the mind. But neurodiversity has no political connotations at all, and the meaning is in the word itself. Maybe you dismissed it as a buzzword or something that sounds politically charged.

You may have heard the word, “Neurodiversity” before.

The full spectrum of colors represents the diversity of the autism spectrum as well as the greater neurodiversity movement. The rainbow infinity sign is the symbol for neurodiversity.

NeuroDiversity by Judy Singer