Therapist
Neurodiversity
Collective

Name: Neuro-Affirming Support and Intellectual Disability: Where Do We Start?
Start: 2023-10-06T09:00:00-05:00
End: 2023-10-06T10:30:00-05:00
Location: Therapist Neurodiversity Collective

International

• Therapy • Advocacy • Education •

Established January 2018

Neurodiversity is “…the diversity of human brains and minds – the infinite variation in neurocognitive functioning within our species.” “Neurodiversity is a biological fact. It’s not a perspective, an approach, a belief, a political position, or a paradigm.”
– Dr. Nick Walker

The Neurodiversity Movement is a Human Rights Movement. “The Neurodiversity Movement says that people with brain-based disabilities (like autism, intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities, or mental health disabilities) should be accepted and included in society just like neurotypical people (people without brain-based disabilities).” – Autistic Self Advocacy Network

Therapist Neurodiversity Collective, Inc.™ is an international neurodiversity-affirming therapy, education, and advocacy organization

that was founded on January 11, 2018.

What we do:

Provide free public access to non-compliance-based, trauma-informed, neurodiversity paradigm-aligned therapists through our directory.
Drive a radical agenda of acceptance and equitable inclusion for autistic, other-neurodivergent, and other-disabled people.
Deliver high-quality, free and low-cost neurodiversity-affirming education and professional development about contemporary autism research, ABA-free practices and methodologies that presume competence, don’t produce trauma and respect dignity, and human rights.

An Autistic-led organization, the Collective’s work is focused on aligning therapy and education practices within a neurodiversity-affirming paradigm rooted in the Neurodiversity Movement’s goal to protect the rights and welfare of autistic and other neurodivergent people. We champion self-determination and promote self-esteem. We honor personal agency, body autonomy, sensory system needs, social communication authenticity, and an autistic/neurodivergent person’s right to say “No”.

Therapist Neurodiversity Collective is unapologetically ABA-free and we don’t train social skills. Dehumanizing, compliance-based practices have been linked to poor mental health outcomes and increased suicidality in autistic adults.

Therapists who are aligned with Therapist Neurodiversity Collective are credentialed and licensed pro-neurodiversity-focused, trauma-informed providers, wholly allied with the Neurodiversity Movement as a Human Rights Movement. We believe that therapists and educators shouldn’t try to “normalize” autistic and other-neurodivergent people at the expense of their emotional, physical, and psychological well-being.

We are activists centered on flipping the autism narrative, impacting radical changes in therapy and education practices, and championing autistic and other neurodivergent human rights.