The Dangerous Over-Accommodation Myth |
Students in K-12 and college have been battling a new development when seeking accommodations for mental disabilities such as autism, ADHD, anxiety, and depression: a backlash against accommodations for invisible disabilities.
In the January 2026 issue of The Atlantic, staff writer Rose Horowitch observes the ways student disability accommodations have changed the landscape of universities—but not for the better.
She writes, at the beginning of her article, "Administering an exam used to be straightforward: All a college professor needed was an open room and a stack of blue books. At many American universities, this is no longer true.”
Why? Per Horowitch, “Professors now struggle to accommodate the many students with an official disability designation.” There are so many of these students, she claims, because "more young people [are] getting diagnosed with conditions such as ADHD, anxiety, and depression.”
But, per Horowitch, the rise in diagnoses is not the only cause of the surge in accommodations. She notes, “Universities [are] making the process of getting accommodations easier.”
Right off the bat, then Horowitch implies that the rising number of diagnoses is linked to fake diagnoses, which is both offensive, dangerous, and incorrect. She also provides no evidence that getting accommodations in higher education is easier today than it was a decade ago.
My extensive research for my recent book A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education (Kansas, 2024) disproves her claim. Students still must jump through extensive hoops to get accommodations and deal with faculty who feel negatively toward their........