what does neurodivergent mean?
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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.
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