Posts Tagged ‘neurodiversity’

A Clinician’s Guide to Delivering Neuro-Informed Care: Revealing the Autism Story is a book by Dr Marilyn J. Monteiro.

Dr Monteiro developed the MIGDAS, a structured tool for conducting autism assessments. I’ve done her training for both children and adults, and I love everything about it. It’s neuro-affirmative, talks about autistic brain styles in a supportive way that avoids deficit talk, and demonstrates a deep understanding of autism beyond the surface-level descriptions that other tools offer.

This book is a comprehensive guide to understanding autistic brains in children, adolescents and adults. It is composed largely of case examples, so you can see in action what it looks like to work collaboratively with a client to reveal their story, rather than listing symptoms. It also includes examples of making recommendations for support. Highly recommended for anyone working in autism assessment.

Unmasking Autism: The Power of Embracing Our Hidden Neurodiversity is a book by Devon Price.

I didn’t think I would find a book I loved as much as Neuroqueer Heresies, but here we are. Price explores the experience of masked autistics (those who hide their neurodivergent traits) in depth.

Neurodivergence is often defined by how much it impacts neurotypical people. For example, a children that can often be noisy or moving around in class might be described as “very” ADHD. Whereas another child who hides their kinetic traits and experiences a large amount of mental health issues and exhaustion as a result might be described as less ADHD, or not ADHD at all, even though their internal experience is the same.

Price goes on to describe how the messages we receive in a childhood can often lead to opposing reactions. For example, a child who is told they are too needy and intense may become hyper independent, emotionally avoidant, and struggle to ask for help. Those told they are selfish and robotic may become overly helpful people pleasers, unable to assert their own needs.

Engagement in interests is also defined in terms of its ability to make money or fit in with society. If someone spends all day playing with trains, they might fit an autistic stereotype. But what about individuals who are obsessed with work, spending 80 hours a week at the office? Many people in tech are self-taught having spent their entire teenage years sitting in front of a computer. Others spend their teenage years studying people: fashion, makeup, conversation, social dynamics, treating learning to fit in as a science.

All of this, and much more detailed in the book, leads to much of autistic experience being hidden.

Menopause and ADHD: How to navigate hormone flux and neurodivergence is a book by Helen Wall.

Wall is a GP and menopause specialist, and this book shares her professional expertise in an accessible wall. It is written with an ADHD/menopause brain in mind: under 200 pages divided into eight chapters, each one with a summary at the start and a bullet pointed summary at the end. It is written from a medical perspective and talks a lot about hormones and their impact, but in a way that is easy to follow and includes practical advice on identification, speaking to your GP, diagnosis and treatment options.

It doesn’t have the same depth as Autistic Menopause, which is based on lived-experience research and participant stories, and also provides a comprehensive introduction to menopause if you are new to the topic. But given how easy to read this book is, it is well worth getting both.

In the latest series of Leeds Autism Practice events, we looked at the cost of burnout and how to recover from it. This was my fast time collaborating on an event and I’m very grateful to Marta for all of the hard work she put in. It was well received by the audience who said it resonated strongly, as well as containing lots of useful information.

Last week we held our fifth live event with Leeds Autism Practice. This one looked at why neurodivergent individuals often have mental health difficulties, the barriers to accessing support, and practical solutions for what we can do about it.

Last week, we can two more events for Leeds Autism Practice. The Science of AuDHD: Understanding Autism, ADHD, and How They Combine explored theories behind neurodivergence, including monotropism, double empathy, interest-based nervous systems, and many other theories. We then went onto explore what these looked like in a combined presentation of AuDHD.

Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities is a book by Nick Walker. It is a collection of his writings on autism, neurodiversity and Neuroqueer Theory.

In the book, he sets out the case for the neurodiversity paradigm over the pathology paradigm, what we might also call the neuroaffirmative model vs the medical model. Walker argues that just because one way of being seems to be more frequent, that does not mean it is the “correct” way. There are far more Chinese people than British people, but that doesn’t make being Chinese the normal nationality and being British an aberration.

Neurotypical functioning is conceptualised as a social construct: when people were described as “high/low functioning”, what we were really describing was their ability to conform to social standards. Walker makes the case that there is no such thing as a neurotypical brain, but there are people who can conform to neuronormative behaviours in a way that feels natural, and therefore enjoy the privileges of being considered normal. Just as gender is a spectrum, but many people can conform to gender-based norms well enough to enjoy the privileges that are afforded to cis individuals.

Walker also makes the case for a wide definition of neurodivergence. It includes intrinsic neurodivergence, such as autism, but also includes epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, the effects of drugs, or long-term meditation. If our brain diverges from the dominant cultural expectations, it is neurodivergent.

The book explores the difference between disability and impairment: someone may have a specific impairment, but they only have a disability in a social context. If you are deaf and you walk into a room filled with people using spoken language, you are disabled. But as someone who does not know sign language, if I walked into a room filled with people communicating in BSL, I would be the one who was disabled.

Walker suggests that professionals who have spent their lives working in the pathology paradigm find it almost impossible to make the shift to the neurodiversity paradigm. Walker goes as far as to suggest that any professional wishing to work with autistic individuals should have to have training from an autistic person who themselves is well-versed in autistic culture and the neurodiversity paradigm. This seems very reasonable given the importance of lived experience that we now recognise in many areas of society.

The journey here is a familiar one: being gay has gone from a mental illness to acceptance, and then to an understanding of the damaging impact of dominant social ideologies on minorities. Neurodivergence is going through this same process. As a community, we are building a culture, claiming an identity, and speaking out against the deficit model. Walker brings this together in the practice of neuroqueering: queering social norms as to how our brains should behave.

The Female Profile of Autism: A Guide to Clinical Assessment is a book by Isabelle Hénault and Annyck?Martin. It suggests its intended audience is both clinical professionals and autistic women looking to understand how autism presents in women and what the assessment process looks like.

It has three parts. The first talks about autistic experience in the third person. The second is a narrative written by Martin about her experience of discovering she is autistic. Part three is some guidelines for clinical assessment.

I wasn’t too sure what to make of the book. There is clearly a lot of relevant clinical experience here. But is it neuroaffirmative? I’m not sure. It’s not medical model but it’s not the language I would expect to see in a new book. However, it was written in French and then translated to English, so it is fair to say some of the language may have got off point in translation.

It also leverages the work of Tony Attwood a lot. Now, Tony Attwood is a legitimate bigwig with his own Wikipedia page. But some of the language is like “and the magnificant Tony Attwood says…” as if he is the Wizard of Oz. Maybe he is; I’ve not met him. But I would like a clinical book to reference research and integrate ideas a little more. And again, maybe some of this is the translation.

The assessment guide provides a lot of useful questions. I would tweak the language to pathologise a little less, but the questions hit on the relevant issues. Overall, I would say this is a useful book for clinicians working with autistic women and girls.

Under the Radar: An Essential Guide to Autism and Girls is a book by Dr Emilia Misheva.

It’s a short book at arounf 140 pages which makes it a nice easy read. There are not enough short books in the world. It is written for a general audience and would be a good read for anyone looking to understand a lot of the key issues for autistic girls. Clinicians might want something a little more technical but it would still be a good overview.

The Adult Autism Assessment Handbook is a clinical guide to carrying out autism. It is written by Davida Hartman, Tara O’Donnell-Killen, Dr Anna Day, Jessica K Doyle (Author), Dr Maeve Kavanagh, & Dr Juliana Azevedo, most of all of which are connected to the Adult Autism Practice of Thriving Autistic.

Although it is typically a guide to assessment, it’s a brilliant book to help anyone understand autism. It has a guide to neuroaffirmative language, in-depth explanations of what it is like to be autistic, up-to-date research on models of autism, a critique of current autism assessments and a guide to conducting collaborative assessments neuroaffirmatively. Well worth a read.