The importance of tailored Mental Health Services for the Neurodiverse population
As part of this year's Mental Health Awareness Week, I’d like to highlight mental health awareness among those in the neurodivergent populations. Neurodiversity is a viewpoint that brain differences are normal, rather than deficits.
In this context neurodiversity covers the following neurotypes:
We can divide different ideas about what is and is not a neurotype into two basic camps: The scientific approach and the social approach. The scientific approach defines a neurotype as literally a completely differently wired brain, which is observable in a lab, able to be classified scientifically and caused by genetics (otherwise it is not a form of "natural variation"). In the social approach, however, a neurotype is not defined by what we can observe in a lab. In this approach, a person with misophonia could be considered to have a non-neurotypical (or "neurodivergent") neurotype, because this approach assumes that even things not caused by genetics are a form of natural variation. The social approach also allows that one can have two different neurotypes at once, such as autism and ADHD, if that description suits the person in question.
The neurodivergent brain may experience such mental health issues as trauma, autistic fatigue and burnout, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, ODD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, self-harm and suicide.
Right from the start CAMHS, at least in the writer's area, will not see these clients or accept neurodiversity and so people fall through the gaps, parents struggling and together they find themselves fighting the most difficult trauma brought about by misdiagnosis or non-diagnosis for years thinking they are broken when in reality they may have brilliant minds just not being used in the way they were meant to.
Being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world can bring on ( possibly mis ) diagnoses such as emerging borderline personality disorder, anxiety, depression and bipolar. Although still many young people are not seen by mental health services as they are labelled merely as autistic or ADHD.
It’s time we addressed this and have specialist units for the neurodiverse with specialist knowledge, psychosocial and mental health support to enable them to function in a society that works against their mental well-being. As well as supplying training for the neurotypicals working, schooling and living with them to enable acceptance and understanding. Trying to conform is a tiring process as is attempting to advocate as a parent. Proper parenting courses are needed for the parents of the neurodivergent to understand their children, and possibly themselves as none of the current parenting help available covers neurodiversity.
These hospitals need to be neurodiverse friendly with the right architecture, interior design and equipment to be sensory-sensitive spaces. Staff need to be either neurodivergent themselves or well-trained in the intricacies of neurodiversity culture and the neurodivergent individual.
I write mainly of early intervention, but there are still many neurodivergent adults in and out the system unable to get their needs met through misdiagnosis or non-diagnosis which has then turned to self-harm, substance misuse and even suicide.
We can turn this around and easily provide this support with the right funding and education, we can support these individuals to become world-changing leaders and encourage them to use their neurodiversity to their full potential by supporting their mental health rather than have their world destroyed by the lack of acceptance and understanding around them, trying to make them be what they are not.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Further reading / watching
Gotham, K, Marvin, AR, Taylor, JL. (2015) Characterizing the daily life, needs, and priorities of adults with autism spectrum disorder from interactive autism network data. Autism 19(7): 794–804.
Kamp-Becker, I, Schröder, J, Remschmidt, H. (2010) Health-related quality of life in adolescents and young adults with high functioning autism-spectrum disorder. Psycho-Social Medicine 7: Doc03.
Kerns, C, Maddox, B, Kendall, P. (2015) Brief measures of anxiety in non-treatment-seeking youth with autism spectrum disorder. Autism 19(8): 969–979.
Lever, AG, Geurts, HM (2016) Psychiatric co-occurring symptoms and disorders in young, middle-aged, and older adults with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 46(6): 1916–1930.
Simonoff, E, Pickles, A, Charman, T. (2008) Psychiatric disorders in children with autism spectrum disorders: prevalence, comorbidity, and associated factors in a population-derived sample. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 47(8): 921–929.