what does neurodivergent mean?
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It’s basically an umbrella term for anyone who has some form of mental issue that makes their mind different from the norm. This can be PTSD, bipolar, learning disabilites, etc etc.
Basically, neurodivergent is an umbrella term for anyone who’s brain works differently. So mental illness, learning disabilities, etc. The opposite would be neurotypical, meaning your brain functions as it should, and you don’t have any illnesses/disabilities.
It just means your brain and/or nervous system don’t work in a way which is considered to be typical of the majority of people.
The word comes from “neuro” – to do with the brain and nerves – and “divergent” – moving away or branching off.
There’s lots of different types of neurodivergence, including autism/autistic spectrum disorder, ADHD, dyslexia, sensory processing disorder, Down syndrome, synaesthesia (where the senses get crossed over so you can hear colours or taste music, for example) and a host of other things.
Neurodivergent people are often diagnosed with a disorder of some sort because the way they think makes it harder to interact with neurotypical people (people whose brains and nerves work the same way as the majority of other people’s) or can make it really hard to do tasks that other people may find easy, or it can make conditions like being in a noisy or brightly-lit environment cause literal pain to them where most other people wouldn’t even notice it was a bit louder than usual.
Neurodivergence (being neurodivergent) can also make some things easier – often neurodivergent people find it easier to spot when someone’s lying, or to see a pattern in a complex image or set of information, or to pick out a tiny sound from a noisy environment.
But whatever their specific strengths or difficulties might be, a neurodivergent person may also just have a different approach to doing things which shows that their neurotype (the specific way their brain/nerves work) is different from the usual ways of thinking/processing their senses. Neurodivergence can exist for somebody without being diagnosed, especially if they are good at masking (behaving as though they were just like other people even though really they’re not), even if they don’t show any major difficulties in the everyday world or don’t have any special talents as a result of it.
If a neurodivergent person is good, or at least passable, at getting along in the world and can hold a job, make friends and take care of their own body, mind and home, they may not be diagnosed or may be diagnosed later in life as they start to realise that not everybody thinks or acts the same way they do.
Agreed with others that it’s an umbrella term for someone who has been identified as having non-typical cognitive functioning. The general idea is that instead of identifying a mental illness to be fixed we identify people as having brains that simply work differently.
My experience is that this is most commonly used in the autism context where people on the spectrum have different cognitive patterns that tend to have both strengths and weaknesses compared to neurotypical people that are fairly consistent over the lifespan. As a result, the illness model isn’t a good fit in that it’s not clearly a problem (our STEM fields would look very different if we “cured” ASD) and, although people can learn skills to make better social connections, it’s not curable or treatable like an illness.
Anything that was categorized under the former axis 2 in the DSM 4 which was not a personality disorder: Mental retardation and various forms of autism. In addition, neuropathological conditions with behavioral implication, i.e. literal brain damage. Oh, and ADHD, but that was formerly on axis 1.
You probably can jot down several forms of dementia as well, but in that case the question about how “age-appropiate” the illness is comes up. A 90-year old with Alzheimer’s is less “divergent” than a 25-year old with some form of dementia.
Neurodivergence is largely defined by behaviour, because rarely actual neuropathological differences are found. First came the behavioural diagnosis and then later came the explanation relating to differences in the connectome. We actually do not know if the neurology of neurdivergent people noticably diverges, we just assume it based on behaviour. We do not even conclusively know that about autism. The exception to that notion are the aforementioned brain damage patients.
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