The Intersection of Neurodiversity and the Medical Model of Care - 2022 Conference

Session Description

The neurodiversity movement is changing the ways people think about diagnosis and individuality. Many people enter therapy with the desire to accept and embrace who they are, yet for much of our profession’s history, this desire to help people embrace who they are has not extended to people who think differently about the world due to DSM-diagnosable conditions. While we have at least rejected refrigerator mothers and schizophrenogenic mothers, we have yet to deliver the message that not all diagnoses are things we should seek to fix in clients. The medical model assumes problems exist within people. MFTs largely see problems existing between people. Neurodiversity posits that problems don't exist within people, or between people, but in the tension between what the person needs and what the world is willing to accommodate. The neurodiversity movement asserts that the medical systems, the educational system, the legal system, and every…