What is Neurodiversity?
To me, neurodiversity is the idea that neurological differences like autism and ADHD are the result of normal, natural variation in the human genome. This represents new and fundamentally different way of looking at conditions that were traditionally pathologized; it’s a viewpoint that is not universally accepted though it is increasingly supported by science. That science suggests conditions like autism have a stable prevalence in human society as far back as we can measure. We are realizing that autism, ADHD, and other conditions emerge through a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental interaction; they are not the result of disease or injury.
.. Previous campaigns to accept diversity in race or orientation were simpler in comparison to the upcoming struggle for neurological equality. In them, all we had to change were beliefs and attitudes. With neurodiversity we must change beliefs at the same time we find ways to solve significant functioning problems.