Neurodiversity: Beyond "Differently Wired"
Psychology Today
The neurodiversity movement has successfully challenged stigma by reframing conditions like autism and ADHD as natural neurological variations rather than diseases, yet it remains constrained by the very medical model it critiques. By accepting psychiatric categories and focusing exclusively on internal biological explanations for distress, this paradigm uncritically replaces deficit-based essentialism with difference-based essentialism. Consequently, it fails to account for social and relational factors that contribute to psychological impairment, thereby maintaining a narrow explanatory framework despite its progressive moral stance.
All articles from 28 August 2026. Summaries are AI-generated and may contain errors; the linked article is the authority.