To think a very high percentage of people are Neuro divergent?

[Marshmallow4545]

I have just spoken to yet another friend who suspects that they may be Neurodivergent. They are not interested in seeking a diagnosis for various reasons but this means they will never be picked up in the statistics. Anecdotally, this isn't unusual amongst my friendship circle and I now suspect that a very large percentage of the population believe they may be ND even if they have no diagnosis and have never seen a professional about this. So out of interest please vote:

YABU: if you think you are Neurotypical
YANBU: if you believe you are Neurodivergent, even if you don't have a diagnosis

I think that actually ND is the standard and the NT are the anomalies.

My whole family is somewhere on the spectrum, albeit mostly undiagnosed due to age (none of us seeking adult diagnosis).

• Father was clearly dyslexic in the 1940s in school. Was labelled a dunce because he was unable to read and write, despite coming from a family of academics. His wife was still doing his writing for him into his adult life.

• Mother found accessing her emotions very difficult and was exceptionally socially awkward.

• Sis - never leaves the house. Isn't 100% anti social but spends all her time only with her close family. Very, very clever. Fits the stereotyped/hackneyed unemotional brilliant academic model.

• My nephews. One is very similar to mum. Never leaves the house. The other has virtually cut off family and lives a solitary life in his own home.

• I have many autistic traits, including those of my sis & nephews (being very anti social although not a recluse). Struggle with expressing emotion. Also have chaotic ADHD tendencies.

• My son, clearly autistic, ADHD, does have a diagnosis of Dyslexia (getting tested for the others when he was a child wasn't a thing).

• DGD is diagnosed in all 3, plus a couple of others (needed for her education).

I've accepted my 'oddness' and really DGAF about what causes it. I think the flip side of it has been intelligence and my academic abilities. Also, the social communication issues it gives me has left me very independent which for a woman of my age, I honestly think is a good thing, meaning I've never really had any inclination to depend on a man (which can be the kiss of death financially for women). I wouldn't change it, for myself. Others may well feel differently. And it would certainly never cross my mind to seek diagnosis. I think that's only necessary for either equal access to education or if accommodations need to be made at work.

They can be Neurodivergent in the sense that they diverge from what is currently considered to be Neurotypical. This simply means that the labels are wrong, not that the majority of people have to be NT.

If as many people who are labelling themselves as ND are actually ND then clearly they’re not divergent at all, just falling within the huge spectrum of human behaviours and abilities. I don’t understand why people who are able to function perfectly well in society are keen to medicalise their personality type.

I’m a psychologist

Research suggests around 6% people with autism, 15% with adhd, something in the middle of both of those (let’s say 10%) for dyslexia & dyspraxia. Often conditions overlap so probably 15-20% of people in the UK are neurodiverse.

Or maybe society has created this strawman of a Neurotypical person and the majority of the population has noticed that they significantly diverge from this. We need to redefine Neurotypical to represent the majority and make adjustments to society to reflect this rather than thinking of ND people as somehow special and exceptional.

There's a thread just like this every other week, do people never get bored of the topic?

What do you even mean by ND OP? Do you just mean autistic? ADHD? Both of those plus dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia etc?

15 - 20% of people are thought to be ND, that means at least 80% are not. Being ND is nowhere near being in the majority no matter how much people love to spout shite and pretend it now is. But 1 in 5 people are thought to be ND so you are likely to know several ND people - well you are if you know more than 4 people anyway, and I assume you do?

15 - 20% is the number of people that are thought to be ND, not the number of people with a diagnosis. Some people who think they're ND will be correct - I think I am, I have a child who has ASD and dyspraxic and have other relatives with diagnosed dyslexia, dyspraxia and ASD. - and there and some who won't be correct.

I get so bored of these constant threads saying 'I think there are more ND people than NT', 'I think ND is the norm now'. 'I think ND is just a personality type'. Try having a child that didn't have a single friend through the whole of Secondary school, a child who spends every break time and every lunch time alone for 7 years, who never sees anyone after school, who feels like they belong in a different world because they just don't get this one. Then tell me that this disability is just a personality type and just the norm and everyone has it.

These threads are so fucking offensive and they're done over and over and over again.

I disagree with this - neuro-typical does not necessarily mean the majority, it just means that it is the way of thinking, behaving, reacting etc that society is set up to work best with.

A relevant comparator is the way that much of the society, at least in the western world is set up to work for white men, even though they are not the majority.

The problem with neuro-divergent is it is a catch all label for a lot of different conditions which are often co-morbid but aren't always. Most people just think ADHD or Autism, but there are a lot more that are classed as ND (dyslexia, dyspraxia, Tourette's, OCD) as well as a number of things that are currently classed as 'mental health' conditions, which I think in future, will likely be re-classified as neuro-divergent.

It may be that there is a majority of people that have ND, but that if you looked at each type of ND individually, no single one would affect more people than are NT.

A lot more people are being diagnosed as ND because of a range of factors, but is largely due to a pincer movement of late diagnosed women (I am a late diagnosed ADHDer) and better and earlier diagnosis of children

A combination of awareness, historical tendency for ADHD and Autism to be seen as something that only affects boys, the impact of menopause and perimenopause on ADHD presentation and an increasingly fast paced and stressful way of life which makes it difficult to just plough through is leading more women to struggle.

The increased ability of people to share experiences via social media, easier access to medical information for checking symptoms and increased openess around talking about perimenopause and menopause means women who may previously have thought their struggles were just hormones, are not only able to identify ADHD (or other ND condition) as a possibility but are supported to seek diagnosis and support.

The understanding of the condition from their own diagnosis then leads them to spot it in others more easily and suggest they seek diagnosis, or in the case of their children, push for assessments which creates what appears to be the current snowball effect of new diagnosis.

It works the other way as well - as more children are assessed and diagnosed due to increased awareness, their parents realise they have similar traits and then seek assessment, or at least deploy ND coping tactics even if they don't want to seek a formal diagnosis.

My hope is that we will start to move society to be more inclusive - certainly within schools and education facilities, so that those who are ND don't necessarily need a diagnosis, because the school is set up in a way that caters for all so that only the children with the most complex needs need additional support. I think making schools a lot more ND friendly will also benefit a lot of NT children.

I also hope work environments adapt as well - they have started to recognise mental health and menopause, so it wouldn't be a huge leap to become more ND friendly, without ND people having to declare their diagnosis and ask for accommodations.

Flexible working and home / hybrid working (where possible) as a given and not as a special accommodation, not just a recognition of work-life balance but an active enforcement of it (think more the European model of leave being sacrosanct rather than the UK / US model of people needing to be on call 24/7), as AI becomes more developed, using it to reduce working hours rather than make redundancies etc.

It sounds like an unrealistic utopia, but there will be a tipping point as more and more people are diagnosed or recognise how their brain works and some of those people will be in positions of power and influence that can change things.

How do they know these stats are correct? They must have had to extensively study a very large sample size to accurately estimate this.

@3pears OCD isnt a neurodivergence, it’s an anxiety disorder which can co-occur commonly with neurodivergence…. Another thing that often “looks the same” as adhd is ptsd…. Not all symptoms, but lots of them.

I just have images of children being crushed under the endless demands of 'educate them' and 'resilience' and I'm like... they're ten years old. They're being flattened. We had a brief moment where we recognised we were overloading them but then just marched straight into thinking they cope with huge volumes of information about things they shouldn't be thinking of at all. It's not any kind of answer to the current state of society imo. Sometimes they just need a bit more protection and a bit more softness.

Great idea about not doing school homework in the house and having that clear separation. Kids can still learn at home but in different ways!

Thus proving your own sample redundant!

@Marshmallow4545 as far as I understand they take stats collected through employment and through schools & of course do some clever maths in public health to extrapolate that to a UK wide basis like they would do it model other things (like the likelihood of illnesses spreading or of lives saved through benefit changes etc etc).

it’s not exact, but gives us a good starting point.

God OP you’re obsessed

No, not necessarily. I haven't seen the studies that poster was referencing to understand how these estimates were calculated.

I wonder if anyone truly is 'neurotypical' or if it generally refers to a specific kind of man, the kind that society is built to serve. The older I get the more I see how many people are winging it, are unsure, struggle to communicate in many situations, are overwhelmed in many situations - women especially, but that's because I mainly interact with and am friends with more women. But I would also swear all the men in my family don't seem particularly 'typical'. A lot of isolation, a lot of what people would call 'weird', a lot of hyperfocused interests. A fair bit of self-medication.

I know it's vastly more complex than that and a lot to do with background and class etc but I wonder who exactly the 'typical' is based on. Again especially considering the scale of 'masking'.

I think watching alot of shorts etc can affect attention span.

So do they assess say a random sample of 10,000 people for common ND conditions and then from this extrapolate a population level statistics? This seems the only way you could start to get accurate stats

That probably tallies to my child's classroom. I do think the move away from functioning labels and the removal of some support needs labels is unhelpful.

So my son is likely autistic (still under review for this and ADHD but this is the general consensus) he struggles with demands, it takes a lot of effort to teach him emotional cues and about his emotions, his emotional responses can be very heightened, he needs strict routine, lots of sensory I put etc. yet he's verbal, in mainstream school, has friends, is invited to parties but also has sensory meltdowns, can struggle to function at all under even minor stress. Basically his day to day life and our day to day experience of parenting him is very different to that of our neurotypical daughter in that there are so many things we never have to consider and if there are misunderstandings she's easily corrected etc.

That's still a million miles from the non verbal, higher support needs side of things, which I assume is much much harder to navigate, parent, support etc. I don't know if reducing it to one diagnosis is helpful. I'm hopeful my son will be independent at some point as an adult but to be confident your child definitely won't be independent ever must be a very different life.

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2024/understanding-neurodiversity-across-the-uk-population-study

Your post reminded me of this study. It is so complex and so many people express traits in vastly different ways. It's very hard to say who is ND and who is NT, especially if you're traits don't fit neatly into a recognised condition.

OCD is starting to be recognised as a neuro-diversity now as people with the condition see it as a core part of who they are and therefore something to be managed and not cured.

Some research shows that it is caused by innate differences in brain function rather than fluctuating moods, thoughts and behaviours which define mental health issues.

If everyone considers themselves to be neurodivergent then no one is are they?

This is oversimplified, but: I think there is wild over-diagnosis of neurodivergence. The fact is that modern life, especially work environments are not optimised for humans to be able to function as humans. We have unrealistic expecatations regarding focus, productivity, etc. Rather than look at the systems we have to live and work within and say they're broken because they don't fit human brains (which change as we age, like digestion and anything else to do with our bodies), we tell ourselves our brains are broken and we're neurodivergent because we can't maintain focus etc. Some people are of course further along the scale than others, to the point where the way their brains function impacts their daily life far more than the average person (my partner is one of them, his ADHD impacts him in multiple ways and his autism means he doesn't have certain filters other people do) but on the whole we're all way too willing to look past the fact that we're living lives we were never meant to live and castigating our brains and bodies for not being able to cope with that.

Fucking hell, it gets worse and worse, people with diagnosed ASD are just fussy? Are you taking the piss?

I wish these threads would stop being allowed they are just a free for all for people to be in your face ableist.

Tell my son he was just too fussy when he didn't have a single friend through the whole of secondary school, tell him he's interesting because he spent every break and lunchtime alone for 7 years, tell him he's just rude because he didn't feel like he fit in anywhere, felt frequently overwhelmed and didn't know how to behave in a world that made no sense to him. He's not at the extreme of the spectrum, he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

But don't worry! He's not looking for pity or handouts. He spent his time learning to program and is now working as a software engineer. Personally I didn't want him to be interesting or have issues, I just wanted him to fit in and not struggle. But you believe whatever ignorant bullshit you like.

Exactly right, the terms need to be reversed

I think the poster was saying that people self diagnose incorrectly based on normal personality traits. Eg saying they are fussy so they must be autistic. Which obviously minimises the experience of actual autistic people. I don’t think the poster was saying if you’re autistic it just means you’re a bit fussy.