Neurodiversity

What is Neurodiversity?

Neurodiversity is the concept that all humans vary in terms

of how their brains work: everyone has talents and things they

struggle with. However, for some people, the variation between

those strengths and weaknesses is more pronounced, which can

bring enormous talent in some areas but can also make other

tasks more difficult. Although technically, we're all neurodiverse

because nobody's mind works in exactly the same way, we know

people who have this more profound difference between

strengths and weaknesses as 'neurodivergent'.

Neurodiverse or neurodivergent people tend to find some

things very easy and other things incredibly hard. This usually

leads to an inconsistent performance at school or work due to

the mismatch between the two. However, on the flipside,

neurodiversity can be a competitive advantage when the

individuals are in the right environment, and can make use of

their strengths, instead of constantly trying to overcome

challenges. To achieve this, we must create work and study

spaces that reduce obstacles and amplify diverse abilities.

What kind of conditions are considered to be neurodivergent?

Everybody experiences differences in strengths and weaknesses

but for many individuals these differences tend to be smaller, so

they have a more 'standard' shared way of viewing the world

and completing tasks. This majority group is what we referred to

as 'neurotypical' people.
 A neurodivergent person’s skills have a lot more variation,

and this variation can manifest in different ways. One

neurodivergent person might be a maths genius who's also

hopelessly disorganised. Another might be very sociable and

skilled at spatial reasoning, but really struggles with basic

literacy and maths skills. Neurodiversity recognises that all

these millions of different ways of thinking and doing are

equally important and valuable.

Neurodiversity is a very broad group, and neurodivergent

individuals can have any one (or even a combination) of many

different conditions that fall under the neurodiversity umbrella.

Here are some that you might have heard of:

ADHD

Autism

Dyslexia

Dyscalculia

Dysgraphia

Dyspraxia

Developmental Language Disorder

Tourette's Syndrome

It is estimated that around 1 in 7 people have

neurodevelopmental differences which are observed when they

learn and process information in a particular way.