What Is Neurodiversity?

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Ableism is often overlooked and accepted by mental health professionals.

Ethical values of competency may lead to professionals feeling they should not see neurodivergent clients.

A lack of providers who feel competent to treat neurodivergent clients creates additional ethical dilemmas.

Professionals must change ableist attitudes and help expand access to care for neurodivergent clients.

Recently, I attended a social gathering with a group of mental health providers. As people were talking, I heard someone make the comment, “Oh, I don’t work with autistic people.” I was not surprised by this comment as I have heard many colleagues say similar things in a number of professional settings over the years. I was also not surprised to observe that most of the other therapists present either offered neutral responses or agreed that they too didn’t work with autistic people.

As an autistic provider and disability rights advocate, I knew I needed to take action. After this incident, I began including an exercise in a training I offer on the intersectionality of neurodevelopmental disabilities and mental health struggles. I have people write down a minority population, then ask them to fill in the following sentence with the group that they chose: “I don’t work with _____ people.”

While most mental health professionals have no objections to someone stating that they don’t work with autistic people, they become quite uncomfortable when they are asked to say, “I don’t work with black people,” “I don’t work gay people,” etc. because this statement suddenly feels like an ethics violation.

Someone excluding clients due to their race, ethnicity, gender, or other minority identity would not be tolerated by colleagues; the decision could even lead to serious professional consequences. If this is the case for other minorities, why does the profession look the other way when........

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