Hey, hello, everyone. Welcome welcome.
It's great to have you all here at another Skill Sessions online event.
Lots of people joining. We've got the chat going - fantastic.
Anybody who's new to Skills Sessions, this is an event series online and in person all hosted by Bios by CareScribe.
It's designed to share knowledge about areas of neurodiversity and disability
and help to build and foster an inclusive community
for these sorts of topics to be discussed.
Each event is different and on a different topic and you've joined
today for an exciting session with Jess Meredith, CEO and Founder of Differing Minds,
so it's so lovely to have all of you here.
Thanks so much for getting involved in the chat.
Keep the chat going. Let us know where you're tuning in from.
Got lots of people from,
some people from sunny Bristol like us nice. Nice weather here today in Bristol bit cold,
but still still nice for January.
We got Manchester, more Bristol folk - brilliant. South London, keep it coming.
Great. Yeah, let's keep the chat going, you know, as I say.
It's all about the community. So it's nice to get involved on the chat and get the conversation going.
So I very much encourage you to post throughout the event.
All right. So as usual, I'm just going to kick off with a
little information about CareScribe to let you know who we are and why we run these events.
So my name is Rich and I'm one of the founders and directors of CareScribe.
If you haven't haven't heard of us before, CareScribe is a Bristol based assistive technology
company. Myself and the two other founders, Chris and Tom, are all neurodivergent as are many of our team. And as a company we spend every
day working to support disabled and neurodivergent individuals to work and study independently.
And we do this by building technology and software tools, some of which you may have heard of before such as Caption.Ed and TalkType.
'What are they?' I hear you ask. So, Caption.Ed is a piece of captioning
and note-taking software designed to help people better comprehend and retain a huge amount of information
that are thrown at us every day in our busy lives. Probably sounds very familiar.
Of course, that's of tremendous value to a wide range of people with a wide range of disabilities and neurodivergent profiles.
For those who are maybe deaf, or have hearing loss, who maybe struggle to comprehend what's being said as it's being said -
- to those like me who are dyslexic, or have ADHD or ASD who maybe have similar difficulties or find it hard to focus and retain
information as it comes at them. Or even those who maybe have a motor impairment and find it difficult to get thoughts down in a
timely manner. The software's there to support you to, as I say, better comprehend and retain some of that information.
So that's Caption.Ed. And our other software that I mentioned was TalkType, which is our dictation software which helps people
to convert their thoughts into text, something that a wide range of people find very challenging,
including myself, for a wide range of reasons.
If that sounds of interest and you want to find out any more about our assistive technology, or CareScribe,
then feel free to pop a message in the chat or in the feedback at the end of the webinar, and we'll get you set up with a demo.
Or there's lots of information on our website of course, too. Brilliant. A little bit of housekeeping just
before we kick off and I introduce Jess. Captions are available
for your Zoom . I can see people have already enabled them. But if you haven't yet and you need to enable them then please do
enable them within your zoom. And as I mentioned the chat is very much encouraged. So keep it coming. Lots of nice
intros there and and there's also the Q&A function which is more for questions. So we will try and answer your questions usually at the end.
So if you've got a burning question stick I t in the Q&A and we'll pick it up at the end.
Our team's on hand to take any questions that are in the chat and move them across as well, if we can.
But to avoid us missing it pop it in the Q&A if you can remember.
If you see a question and you think "I definitely want that answered" then do upvote it because you can upvote other people's questions.
And finally, there's no wrong questions.
This is a very safe place to learn. So please ask them. Don't hold onto things.
You'll be glad to know this session is being recorded,
So look out for an email from CareScribe, on LinkedIn, an email from CareScribe or it's also on
LinkedIn from tomorrow, and we'll also include Jess's slide deck along with the recording which will come in handy. Skill Sessions as I
mentioned, we run these quite regularly and we've got regular monthly webinars that you're welcome to join. Thank you everybody for joining
today. We've got our next one in March. Which is Mark Woodward from neurobox. And so he's going to be helping us demystify access to
work. So if you want to come along to that then please please do and we're also at the Dyslexia Show at the - think it's in the middle of
March actually. So if you've not heard of that to brilliant show look it up, but we're going to be there if you want to come and meet us in
person.
Okay. Well and without further ado and I think it's time to introduce you suggest and get started. So Jess is an expert in neuro
diversity and inclusion with a passion for reframing the narrative using storytelling and lived experience. She's going to talk to us
about the relationship between mental health and neurodiversity. So I'm sure you can all join me in welcoming and as I sort of hand over
to Jess. So over to you Jess.
Thank you so much Rich. Thanks for having me really good to be here and see so many people interested in such an important topic. So I am
just going to share my screen with you which opefully has worked. Let me know if there are any problems. So as Rich mentioned, my name
is Jess Meredith my pronouns are she/her and I'm neurodivergent and I run an organization called Differing Minds which supports
organizations, schools, universities - anywhere that will have us to promote neuroinclusion and to raise awareness of neurodiversity. But
specifically today, as Rich mentioned I'm here to talk about the link between neurodiversity or specifically neurodivergence and mental
health. So, before we really get started, it's really important for me to issue a warning around this kind of content because obviously it's
a very sensitive topic. It's very emotive and for some of you it may be very triggering whether you're expecting it to be triggering or
not. So if you feel like it is too uncomfortable for you, it is something that is triggering you too much - you do not have to sit
through it, please feel free to step away. Please free to take a moment or leave. As Rich mentioned, this is being recorded. You will
have the chance to go back and watch the recording, maybe watch it in smaller chunks if that's easier for you. So it's really important
that I think everyone recognizes that because - it won't all be really dark but there are some things that that need to be talked
about so that we all understand the situation that we're in as a society when it comes to neurodivergence and mental health.
And alongside that really important for you to know that I don't have a medical background. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a
psychologist. I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not any of these wonderful professions. The experience I have is lived experience, and I've also
learned from many people I have the pleasure of working with and knowing within the neurodivergent community through their lived
experience. I also have some degree of knowledge of neuroivergence from A medical perspective, but I'm not a medical professional. So there is
nothing in here that should be misconstrued as medical advice and just to set expectations. I am certainly not going to tell you how we
eradicate mental health difficulties for neurodivergent people. What my focus is on is making sure people understand the link better and
people know what we can all do, the small part we can all play in our roles as colleagues or broader members of society to support
neurodivergent people perhaps through mental health difficulties, or support them so that they don't experience mental health difficulties
to the degree that they might do if they didn't have this kind of awareness and support.
So again important for me to really make sure everyone understands what we're talking about when we're talking about neurodiversity. So
I won't go into the details about what neurodiversity is in any great depth. But what I do want to do is make sure we all kind of have a
shared understanding especially around the framing of neurodiversity as I see it. So when we're talking about neurodiversity we're
essentially talking about the diversity of our brains. Neuro Diversity. So by definition that includes all of us because we all
have unique brains. We all have diverse brains. We all have these different ways of thinking. But for the purposes of kind of
understanding, especially this link with mental health, it's useful to categorize. Now we love categories as a society. We love
categories. So it's useful to categorize into two groups kind of within the umbrella that everybody exists under. And you would say
that those that exist in the kind of neuro majority - so for the majority of us whilst all of our brains are different, they largely
are the same. They fundamentally see the world and experience the world in a similar way, when you think specifically about some of
these differences. So executive functioning, social interaction sensory processing, communication, information processing, attention,
there is more. All those that stick within the neuro majority experience these things and experience the world in similar ways. But we have a
smaller group of people whose brains are more fundamentally different. So again, we're all unique, but there are some people
within the population, of which I am on,e whose brains are more fundamentally different, and we experience the world in quite a
significantly different way to the majority of people. So for the purposes of this session, I will use the terms 'neurotypical' to
describe those in the neuro majority and 'neurodivergent. to describe those in the neuro minority. But those terms are not universally
accepted. So they're the terms that I prefer to use and other terms that a lot of the neurodivergent community choose to use but they're
not what everybody chooses to use. Some people will prefer terms such as 'neurodiverse', 'neuro a-typical', 'neuro distinct', 'neuro spicy', 'neuro
sparkly' is one I have recently heard. There are so many different terms and it's really vital that we all respect an individual's
preference in terms of terminology. And that and understanding that has a really significant impact actually on somebody's mental
health.
And when I'm talking about those people who were neurodivergent, what I'm talking about is people who may or may not have these types of
differences. So here on the screen is a non-exhaustive list of some of the differences that sit within the neurodivergent umbrella and
I say non-exhaustive because to be honest, there is no definitive list of what goes under that umbrella. There is lots
of debate within the community about what should or shouldn't go into that umbrella. And whilst I think categorization is really
useful, actually, I think we should worry far less about how that categorization works and what labels or what differences or what
conditions sit under the neurodivergent umbrella, and I think we should spend our time focusing on how we support everybody how we
understand everybody, and embrace everybody, regardless of their neuro type. That's where I feel like our efforts should go. So I wanted to
make sure that we all have that kind of similar understanding. I'ts complex. There's lots of nuance to this. So you may have
slightly different opinions, you might have a different perspective on it, but this is how I like to kind of frame things and think about
things.
So to go into the core topic of this session - so the link between neurodivergent and mental health.
I'm going to share some facts in a second on the next slide which are quite alarming. They are quite - they can be very distressing. They're
quite disturbing. So again, if this is something that is going to be difficult for you to hear, you're very welcome to step away. It's
really difficult as a neurodivergent person to think about these things. It's very difficult as a parent or a carer of a
neurodivergent person. It's very difficult as a close friend or family member of a neurodivergent person. So, please please be aware. But
the next part I'm going to share is as difficult as it gets in this session and we will move on after that to talk about what we can
all do to actually improve things.
So some difficult things to talk about. We know through research and through peoples lived experience that neurodivergent people have poorer
physical and mental health outcomes than their neurotypical peers. So not only is this about mental health difficulties, which forms
the basis for most of this session, but they also have a higher prevalence in terms of physical health difficulties to and sometimes
those things can be interlinked which you'll understand a little bit more as I go on to talk a bit more about my story. We know that
autistic people are likely to die 16 to 30 years sooner than their age and gender matched peers. They're allistic peers. So their
non-autistic peers. As a parent of an autistic child that is such a difficult thing for me to hear and understand but it's the reality of
the situation. 30 years younger is such a huge amount and obviously this doesn't exist for every single autistic person. But this just
shows the difference in the outcomes for autistic people versus Allistic people. We know that again, autistic people and more broadly
neurodivergent people have a higher likelihood of dying by suicide or attempting to die by suicide. And actually there is research that has
recently been done that has shown that they research people who had recently died by suicide who weren't diagnosed as autistic, and by
looking through their kind of history, their medical history, speaking to their family members, they were able to see that whilst
they could never diagnose these people as autistic or not, because those people aren't around anymore, they were able to show that
actually they scored pretty highly for autistic traits. So it's actually likely that the higher rates of dying by suicide for
autistic people actually could be even higher but it's just that we don't know, we haven't diagnosed everybody.
And we know that neurodivergent people experience higher levels of isolation and loneliness. And when you feel isolated socially and from
the community and you experience that extreme level of loneliness, that obviously has a significant impact on your mental health. So
there is a big link between neuroivergence and difficulties surrounding your mental health.
To bring that to life a little bit, I want to talk a little bit about what happened to me. So when I was 10 I had shingles and you've
probably heard of shingles and you're probably very aware that shingles is something that usually people over the age of 60 get. But I was
10. And when you Google 'shingles in young people' 'shingles in children', you will get met by a barrage of results that say it's
extremely rare in children. So as a ten-year-old, I remember sitting with the doctors and my parents, who were so confused that I had this,
it was very obviously shingles. I had it through from my chest all the way through to my back. And for those of you that have had it you
will appreciate that it can be extremely painful. It is very very tiring, you suffer a lot from exhaustion, but my parents and the
doctors just couldn't really understand why I had it as a 10-year-old. And the doctors came to the conclusion that it was as a result
of stress. Now I was 10. I had a very happy home life. I came from a very privileged background upbringing. I had friends. I was doing
seemingly well at school. I wasn't experiencing any obvious trauma. So there was no reason anyone could really understand about why I was
experiencing that level of stress that would lead me to have shingles at such a young age. And I remember vividly sitting in meetings with
my parents, the GP, teachers, my head teacher at the time, which is daunting as a ten-year-old, because people just didn't really know
what was going on. But what we didn't know back then and I didn't find out until years later is that I have ADHD. So as a ten-year-old,
I was experiencing the world in a completely different way to the majority of my peers, but I didn't know that about myself. Other
people didn't know about me. So it was having this really really big impact. What was going on in my mind was so complex to me, so busy to
me, I couldn't distinguish from what I really needed to focus on because I had too much going on in my mind. And I have a real
difficulty with the term ADHD - attention deficit hyperactivity disorder - and not only does it have a double negative, but the deficit
part of attention doesn't resonate with me at at all. The way I see it is I have dynamic attention. I have so much attention to so many
different things. What I find difficult is distinguishing what's relevant information for me at any given moment in time from
irrelevant information. So in the context of work, I might be being asked to do something and I know that's what I need to do, but I've
got too much going on in my brain. So I just almost physically can't do what I know I need to do. So all of that going on for me as a
ten-year-old child, but not understanding that other people weren't experiencing this was leading to some real difficulties.
And I want to do an exercise with you now, which I think goes some way to showing what I was experiencing back then and still experience
to this day as an adult because things haven't changed if you have ADHD, you have ADHD.
So in a minute, I'm going to show you a grid that looks somewhat like this. So for those of you that can't see it, what we're looking at
right now is a grid of words and those words spell out colours. But those words are also written in a colour. And the colour that it's
written in is different to what the word says. And in a minute what I want everybody to do you can say out loud or you can say it in your
head, whatever works best for you. I want you to go through that grid from top left to bottom right and I want you to say the colour that
you see, not the colour that you read. So just to make that really clear on this one. So on the left hand side here, we have the word
blue but it's written in red. So what you would say is 'red' and on the right hand side we have the word blue written in black. So what
you would say is 'black'. So I'm going to go on to the next screen in a minute and I want you to try and do that for yourself. See how far
you get but most importantly realize how it's making you feel, and I'd love for you to share in the chat how you're finding it, what that's
like for you. So are you ready? Go.
So hopefully that's given you a chance to kind of experience that and there's some great words coming through here: 'challenging',
'discombobulating', 'stressful', 'my brain ached'. Absolutely. So requires a lot of concentration. So this to me - 'panics' - brilliant perfect words,
exactly, exactly, how I feel like I experience things. So in that exercise it simulates what it's like when you know what you need to
Do, you know rationally know, logically what you need to do, but subconsciously your brain is almost fighting against itself and you
can't help that extra information coming in. Now interestingly, I did this exercise with a group last week. And one of the people in the
group was dyslexic and they actually said 'this is really easy for me because you basically told me I didn't need to read and I find
reading really hard, so it was so easy for me to do' and it just shows us that that's an added dynamic, I think, to this exercise which shows
that we're all good at different things. We all experience seeing things differently, but I hope that goes some way to showing what it
was like or what it is like for me, what it was certainly like for me as a ten-year-old child who had all of this stuff going on in their
brain, had all of this information coming, this sensory information, this actual kind of verbal information, and trying to process signals
that you're trying to process, everything is coming at you and it's exhausting to try and work through all of that to just navigate your
life. Kind of, to exist at school as a, you know, I was very compliant. I really wanted to conform I really wanted to do my best. So it was
exhausting and that exhaustion led to extreme stress which led to a case of shingles.
But that's what - that's my story, right, as one neurodivergent person. But there are many different stories in the neurodivergent population
relating to mental health difficulties. For some it's stress for others, it may be depression for others, it may be anxiety. It could
be a whole host of different things. So what I want to do now is I want to talk about what are some of the reasons that these poorer
mental health outcomes exist and persist in our society for neurodivergent people, beyond what I've talked about in terms of my story.
So firstly, we have so many social expectations or social norms that work for neurotypical people, that are quite easy for neurotypical
people to understand and it's not so easy for neurodivergent people. So when when you know that these norms exist as a neurodivergent
person, you can almost sort of go down two paths, there's more but in a binary way, let's think about these kind of two paths.
One path is 'well, I'm not going to meet these social expectations and these social norms' it maybe through
choice, because I don't want to I want to do things my way or maybe because I can't. My needs are just so much that I need to just
be me in this society. What that can lead to is people not understanding you, thinking that you are odd, wrong, different, not
necessarily in a good way. The other path is the path that I took which was I'm going to try and fit in I'm going to cover up who I am.
I'm going to try and learn these social expectations and norms through copying people and through watching what other people are
doing and I'm going to change a lot about myself. I'm going to mask or suppress my neurodivergent traits in order to fit in. And what can
happen is if you do that over a period of time, it's exhausting. It's draining, its really debilitating. And it can lead to burnout. It can
lead to leaving a job or it can lead to significant mental health difficulties. So either two of those paths contribute to kind of poor
outcomes in terms of mental health, either perhaps from a self-esteem perspective because people just don't understand you because you
don't understand them and the social expectations, or because you are masking so much that you're exhausted, you're burning out and you're
experiencing real difficulties.
There's also a big lack of support out there and kind of even before that, a lack of understanding. So as a neurodivergent person lots
of people don't understand you. Sometimes you don't even understand yourself and when you don't understand yourself or people don't
understand you, it can lead you to feel broken. It can lead you to feel like you don't fit in that. There's something wrong with you.
When in fact actually there isn't, it's just that there's this big misunderstanding out there. So you you really want people to
experience to some degree what you're experiencing, but if you can't have that, which doesn't exist really a lot of the time, you want
people at least to understand and believe and listen to you and understand what you're saying, but that lack of support, not feeling
understood, can lead to real difficulties with your mental health either through kind of anxiety because you're not really sure how to
support people to understand you, or depression because life is just hard not feeling understood and feeling like you're broken, and
it can certainly have big impacts in terms of your self-esteem.
Unfortunately, we continue to live in a world where there are negative associations and connotations with neurodivergence. There's
huge stigma that exists and there is a lot of ableism that exist in our society. So when you're surrounded by that all of the time as
someone who then is diagnosed with a neurodivergent difference, it inevitably is going to make you feel at some stage in your life bad
about yourself. And that then can really lead to mental health difficulties and so much of that is unnecessary. These negative
connotations exist that don't need to be there. So I mentioned even around the naming before, 'attention deficit hyperactivity disorder'.
It's very difficult to get that label put on you and the label itself or the difference itself is not a bad thing. But you've been put into
some society that views it as a negative thing. So it's very difficult to remove that negativity from how you view yourself.
Especially if you are diagnosed as a child or perhaps you're diagnosis as an adult and it's taken you such a long time to get there. There's so
much difficulty that exists around it.
And then there's a lot of bias in our systems relating to diagnosis, a lot of bias exists unfortunately still in the diagnostic criteria
because of biased research. And generally diagnosis is quite inaccessible for a lot of people. So not only is it
inaccessible because of the bias, but it's inaccessible because of the huge wait times we have on the NHS at the moment and also, you
know, a lot of people don't have access to a private diagnosis. So having those barriers and then not being able to understand yourself, whether
it's because you don't even realize you're neurodivergent yourself in the first place, or perhaps it's that you do think you are but you
can't get that kind of - you can't get it on paper. You can't get that recognition. And for some people that is really needed. For me
having an ADHD diagnosis, I have always said this was one of the most liberating experiences of my life because without that and without
the confirmation of somebody else that what I was experiencing was was true almost, can be very very difficult to deal with.
And then I think we, most people realize now or many if not, most people many people realize now that our education system has been
developed with the neuro majority in mind. So if you aren't part of that neuro majority, you don't necessarily fit into the education
system and going through the education system is difficult for you. You might be someone who naturally has a need to move but from the age of about
four or five you're taught that you have to sit still, you have to sit at a desk. We were designed to move, but there's so much more to it
than that. So a lot of the ways that we are taught are through verbal communication. But within the umbrella of neurodivergence exists
developmental language disorder as an example, and those people with developmental language disorders are going to find it extremely
difficult to receive that verbal communication and those verbal instructions. There's so much in our education system that is not
inclusive and that can lead to significant trauma for children. And whilst the audience here is, you know many people that are working
within workplaces, the education part of this impacts employment and I believe if we don't fundamentally change the education system,
we're always going to be fighting somewhat of a losing battle in the workplace. Because when you're trying to support your colleagues,
through maybe some of these difficulties, you're trying to understand their neurodivergence and put what you can in place, they often
have a lot of trauma from what's happened before, so these two things really need to be happening in parallel. But as you can see from
this, there are so many reasons that explain why there's this higher prevalence of mental health difficulties for neurodivergent
people and it's not necessarily a direct impact of being neurodivergent. So just because your brain is wired in that way
doesn't mean that your brain is more susceptible to mental health difficulties. So much of this is indirect, because of all of these
things that we that we experience as part of our society.
So now I will start to lift this up. So if we know this, and I'm sure there are lots of people on this webinar who are experiencing some of
this. What can we do to try to change these outcomes? So as I mentioned at the beginning, I'm not a doctor and there is certainly a
medical angle to this as well. And I am certainly not here to tell you how we're going to eradicate mental health difficulties for the
neurodivergent population. That's not realistic. But what I can do, is I can tell all of us some of the things that I think we can do to
support people and to reframe our thinking around neurodiversity and that reframe is so important.
What I'm going to do now is I'm going to show you a video, and this video helps us to understand that actually if we flip the narrative a
lot of neurodivergence doesn't need to be seen as negative. A lot of the support that we put in place doesn't need to be seen as an added
extra. We really need to start to understand why we're working in the way that we're working and how we look to change that. So this video
comes with a little bit of a warning, that it uses autistic stereotypes. Now the autistic stereotype exists as one way somebody
can be autistic, but it's not the only way someone can be autistic, and I am a total advocate of that. But for the purposes of the video,
we used autistic stereotypes just to try to illustrate the point. And we've had the support of the majority of the autistic community on
this, but I wanted to warn people in case they see that and they find it a little bit triggering. I'm going to show you the video and then I'm
going to talk to you afterwards about where it came from.
So there's just some more text that comes up here that just reiterates that point I made at the beginning about how we use
autistic stereotypes, but I really hope that you understand why we use that to try and make this point. So this video, it was kind
of built off the idea of the social model of disability. So for those that aren't aware of it, the social model of disability is a model
that, its kind of being pushed by the disabled community at the moment and it's different from the more traditional model,
which is the medical model of disability. So under the medical model of disability, you would say that someone is disabled as a result of
their impairment. So if you take a wheelchair user as an example, because it's easier for us to visualize with a visible difference, under
the medical model you would say that person is disabled as a result of not having legs, their back being broken, their legs not
working, whatever it might be that their impairment is but under the social model of disability, we say that someone is disabled as a
result of their environment. So again, if you take a wheelchair user as an example, under the social model of disability, that person is
disabled as a result of a lack of access. So it's relating to their environment. So that person is disabled under the social model by a
lack of lifts, a lack of ramps, a lack of whatever it is that stopping them from accessing the community or workplace or whatever it
might be that non wheelchair users can access. And it's really, this move towards the social model is really important because not
only is it a more positive framing around disability and around neurodivergence, but it also takes the onus away from the individual
to need to change something about themselves, which often they can't. And it puts the onus on society or on workplaces or on whatever
environment it might be to accommodate and to make it accessible for everybody. Now there's no - there's other models too -
and there's no one model that works in every scenario and for every individual but I think a framing predominantly through the lens of
the social model of disability is such an important step in trying to recognize how we lessen these mental health difficulties for
neurodivergent people. Because if we start to see it far less as a problem and just as a difference, it can be so much more positive for
neuroivergent people. So we don't immediately think about it being something wrong with somebody and you know, what do we need to do
over and above what we would do for other people. Actually, it's just a recognition of all we've kind of got it wrong in the first place.
We kind of got it wrong by not including everybody and there's a brilliant phrase that I heard recently relating to neuroinclusive
design of physical spaces, but I think it relates to everything, and it says 'If you design for the needs of the extreme, you meet the needs
of the mean, but if you design for the needs of the mean you don't meet the needs of the extreme'. So what we've done historically is
we've just designed with that neuromajority in mind, so we haven't been able to support everybody. But if you start to design with
everybody in mind, the extremes in mind, which by the way, I have a little bit of an issue with the term 'extremes', but I won't go into
that. You meet the needs of everybody, because a lot of these ways of working, and I think I saw it pop up in the chat actually as the video
was going, would work for so many people. You start to put things in place that work for neurodivergent people, it has a positive impact
on everybody.
So what else can we do to really try to lessen again these kind of, these mental health difficulties for neurodivergent people?
It's critical that we start to address, abandon, challenge, these social norms that exist, that really we need to reframe as
neurotypical social norms, because they're not necessarily norms for everybody and it's not that the neurotypical way is right, and the
neurodivergent way is wrong. It's just that it's all different. And so some of these things for example are around eye contact. For a lot of
autistic people eye contact is very very difficult, painful even. I I know somebody who said that, you know, they see they see faces in
so many different pieces that when they're looking at a face, they're trying to piece all of that together and it's physically painful for
them. So, why would we force somebody to make eye contact just because we perceive that to be a demonstration of
politeness or confidence, when really it doesn't matter. And I think not only do we need to kind of remove these social norms from our
society. Unfortunately, that that is almost impossible at least in the short term. But what we can do as individuals is perhaps challenge
other people when we notice there may be judging or considering things from a social norm perspective. Because if you're someone who's
experiencing that sort of misunderstanding of what's happening in this kind of social environment, it's not that you're wrong. It's
just that people don't understand you as much as they understand them. So I'm not sure if people have heard of the double
empathy problem. The double empathy problem is brilliant because what it says is for autistic people, who stereotypically are known to not
be empathetic. I don't believe this to be the case, but they are double empathy problem says is actually that empathy problem lies on
both sides. Neurodivergent people will really struggle to understand neurotypical people but in exactly the same way, neurotypical
people really struggle to understand neurodivergent people. So it's not that one is right and one is wrong. It's just that neither
can truly understand each other. So we really want to start, kind of challenging people if we see the maybe talk for maybe even covertly
kind of think about these social norms and judge people in the workplace based on these social norms. If you see somebody that you
think is acting strangely, communicating oddly, maybe it's not strange. Maybe it's not odd. It's probably just different and
if it's not harming anybody then it's absolutely fine way to be and exist in the workplace.
The other thing I think is vital is that we adopt a strengths-based approach. So within the workplace if you're lucky enough that someone
shares with you that they're neurodivergent, you don't want to immediately say, 'oh gosh, that must be awful. How is that
difficult for you at work? What challenge does that present for you? '. Whilst you might be coming from a really good place you've
immediately made it a negative - you've kind of reconfirmed for them this negative connotation that exists for neurodivergent people.
What's much better is to lead with strengths. First of all, thank them for telling you, 'thanks so much for telling me that I really
appreciate it. If you're comfortable and will really love to understand a little bit more about that. Let's start with what
positives does that bring for you as a neurodivergent person in the workplace?'. Because bringing out those strengths which neurodivergent
people have is really important to boost confidence and self esteem and make people realize that you are a safe person and you are far
more positive than unfortunately the majority of society when it comes to neuroivergence.
Creating a safe environment is another really key step within the workplace, to try and support people so they don't end up in a
situation where perhaps their masking is leading to mental health difficulties, but how can you really do that? Firstly, really simply
talk openly about neurodiversity in a positive way. So in a neuroaffirmative way, in a positive way about
neurodiversity, and to be really clear about this when I say I'm positive about neurodiversity, I am positive about the huge benefits
that exist because we all have different brains. I'm really positive about the power of the difference that exists within our brains. I'm
not necessarily saying, that I think being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world is wholly positive, because it's not. It's challenges
exist. That's that's the reality and I think sometimes we can get too caught up in its overly positive, this kind of superhero narrative
that actually we need to be more realistic about it. We exist in this world in the way that it is, the difference is positive, but sometimes
it can be really challenging. But I always say when I run sessions like this or I do talks to use them as catalysts to go and start
these conversations in your organization, in your workplace, or just in your team or with one colleague. You know, next time you go into a
team meeting or perhaps you've got to catch up with a colleague after this say, 'oh I went to this session - hopefully - a really interesting
session on neurodiversity. I learned this. Did you know that? What do you think about it? I'm trying to be more neuroinclusive ,like do
you know anything that I could go and learn from?'. Just open up that conversation, you don't need to do know everything, people can get
really caught up in 'oh maybe I don't know enough to be able to have that conversation with people'. It's simply about saying 'I care about
this. I want to know more. I am willing to support people, come and talk to me if you want to,I'm going to go on my own learning journey and
if you want to learn with me, let's do this together'.
Secondly be open-minded. So there are kind of a couple of aspects to this. I mean open-minded in the sense that you don't start to assume every
neurodivergent person is the same. So if you've worked with an autistic person before and somebody else tells you they're autistic,
you don't want to assume that they need the same things. Because if you make that assumption, you may be dismissive of what they're actually
trying to tell you, that's going to have a real impact again on their mental health. But also I mean open-minded from the perspective of just
wanting to learn more. We are so lucky and we have access to so much information in our society now that there's almost no excuses to not
learn about more about this. You could listen to podcasts, read books, follow people on social media, whatever it might be, there's so many
ways that you can kind of continue on that learning journey and do it with people at work. What's really important to do is not put the
onus on neurodivergent people that you work with to teach you. They might want to ,they might be really happy to share some of their
experiences, but it's everyone's responsibility to learn themselves. Because expecting a neurodivergent person at work to relive their own
experience and often trauma over and over again, in the name of educating other people is sometimes not the right thing to do and can
cause more distress than good.
This one's really important and I think we are moving towards understanding that an equitable environment is more important than an
equal one, but we've still got quite a long way to go with this. So, we need to appreciate that everybody has different needs and
therefore everybody needs different things. And if somebody is asking for something different at work, it shouldn't be seen as they're
asking for more or too much. We have to remember that social model of disability video, just to realize that actually they're only asking
this because we got it wrong in the first place, and we didn't enable them to thrive in this workplace in the first place.
And I think you can only truly support neurodivergent people at work if everybody understands neurodiversity, so I believe really
passionately that neurodiversity training should exist for all employees because neurodivergent employees don't exist in pockets in
the organization. We are all working with people that are neurodivergent whether we know or not. So it only takes one person
to dismiss them, invalidate what they're experiencing, make it seem like they're making a fuss, to contribute to real difficulties around
mental health.
But if you take one take away from today, I'd like it to be this. I have a bit of an issue with the term 'empathy' because I think
especially, not with the term but with the focus on empathy, because I think we can never truly empathize with everybody. How can we
possibly truly understand what everybody else is experiencing when we don't live our lives through their skin, in their shoes. But what we can
do is we can listen to them. And what we can do is we can believe what they're saying to us, whether we understand it or not. So I really
encourage everybody to listen to neurodivergent people when they're telling you about their experience and whether you get it or not
believe what they're saying to you. Whether you can change it or not, whether you can offer them the support that they need, validating
their feelings and validating their experiences can be so incredibly powerful.
Thank you so much for joining for this. I'm really aware, as I said at the beginning, of what a sensitive and emotive topic this is. So if
you have sat through it all, I'm really I'm really pleased and I really hope that it was helpful. Amazing. Thanks so much, Jess, that's
fantastic. Lots of well, yeah, I'm sure you've started to see the chat which has been pretty constant throughout, and yeah
everybody I'm sure agrees with me that that was fantastic and has taken a huge amount from it. And I'm sure there's lots of questions
people raised in the chat, but if you want to pop them in the in the Q&A, then we can try and use a few minutes to to answer them.
I can't promise we'll get to all of them. But if you, as I say, throw things in the Q&A, and then we'll sort of happily try and
get through as many as we can. So and there's just a quick question here, but it's probably something we can send over
afterwards, was that there was a stat really early on around the life expectancy for those with autism and it being much younger than
otherwise and it was just where that was was from. If you know it off the top of your head great, if you don't know maybe we can get it
afterwards. Yeah, it's from an academic research paper which I can't remember off the top of my head, but I will share it with you and it
can go out with any of your comms that come out after this. Thanks, Jess, cheers, and so questions are starting to come in, so
keep them going. and there's a question here: other organizations you've worked with which have impressed you in terms of their
approach to neuroinclusion?
Yes, there are and I think I get asked this question a lot actually and one of the things I think I should say because I'm a very
truthful person, is that I don't think anyone is getting this completely right at all. Yes, because even those that perhaps look
externally like they're getting it right. I know I get contacted by a lot of people who are saying that actually the reality of the
situation is quite different. The organizations that are doing this right are focusing much more on what they can do internally before
they started talking about it externally and because they actually care about their employees. And the ones that are doing it right are
also doing it slowly. So I talked a lot about slow, steady, sustainable change for neuroinclusion because I think it's totally unrealistic
to think that you're going to be able to change the mindset of all of your employees, which is what needs to happen over the course of a
few weeks, few months, because what you're expecting for your employees is to unlearn decades worth of societal expectations and societal
norms and what we've all been taught. So the organizations that are doing it Wel,l commit to it over the long term and put a kind of slow and
steady plan into place. The other thing that I see organizations doing really well, is when they appreciate that it's very difficult to
do unless you have leadership on board with it. You need people at the top of an organization to buy into this, because that is how your
culture changes, that is how the values of your organization change. And then after that it's training up and getting managers to
understand. Because if you have if you don't do either one of those two things, if your leaders are on board, but your managers
don't understand people might feel safe and they think 'oh, yeah, this is a great culture' and then I tell my manager and they respond really
badly, then that's wiped out all of that good stuff. But also the other way - if managers are kind of equipped, but actually the culture
isn't there, so the processes and the systems and the ways of working generally aren't in place, again it can be almost impossible for a
manager to actually navigate and actually support in the best way. So there there's lots of people starting on in this journey. If you're
working in an organization you think 'oh my organization is doing nothing', you are not alone. We are really at the beginning in terms of
changing this and I think we've got decades to go to make these changes but the organizations that are doing it well are making a
commitment and are wanting to do things continuously over the long term Can't agree more Jess, thank you for that. That's brilliant. And I
think lots of people in the chat agree with that as well. So, thanks for that. This might be something you're aware of but,
workplace passports, there's a question here about workplace passports. Do you think workplace passports for neurodiverse staff are helpful? My
workplace is resistant, says Marion. That's a shame because yes, I do. I think they're really good. And I don't just think they're good for
neurodivergent people. I think they are good for everybody. It's one of the things that I think is such an easy, quick, win. If we all
understood how to work with people or how they like to be worked with better, it changes the game. I can see someone's popped in here,
'what is a work-based passport?'. So I sometimes call them getting-to-know-you documents, because I think ones I started doing
this years ago actually and since then I've always used them. So it's basically like a set of information about you. Any information that
you want to share about how you like to work with people, how you maybe like to communicate, lots of organizations are doing this in
different ways. Maybe what equipment might be useful for you, whatever it could be, that's kind of documented somewhere that anybody can see
to to know how best to work with you. And I wrote a post on LinkedIn last week if anyone wants to go and check it out, which I
did not realize was going to be so popular but it was basically along this lines, and it was 22 questions that I think a manager should
ask any of their new employees and it's around you know, what their communication style is, how they like to be in
meetings, lots and lots of different things, and so many people said, well that's not just useful for neurodivergent people. That's
useful for everybody, and that is exactly what you would get in a passport and I think it should exist for every individual in every
organization. I think it makes life easier for managers, makes life easier for the colleagues of that person and it certainly makes life
easier for the person. So I'm sorry for that person that is meeting resistance in their organization. I don't know why that would be to
be honest because I don't see any negatives with having that kind of information available.
Absolutely. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for that, Jess and there's lots of questions and I'm aware of time, so we won't manage to get
through them all unfortunately, so, please feel free to upvote questions. The next one and you may you may or may not know this,
Jess, any stats for women with ADHD and life expectancy that you're aware of? I don't know specifically actually, but it's a very
good question. I think given the more recent understanding of women And ADHD, I'd be surprised if there's actually in depth research yet that
shows that, I think that should come, and I think it might be quite quite shocking for people. I think there's so much to for us to still
learn more about in terms of ADHD and women.
Absolutely. Interesting question from Ryan. So Ryan says: I'm an American so the information might differ, and but in your
opinion, what do you believe is the lowest bar companies should have for neuro - well any accommodations?
That's a really tough question. That's really broad.
I think the lowest bar is almost not allowing people to talk about it. Not allowing people to share and I actually see this happen all the
time. I see people opening up about neuroivergence and their own identity and being dismissed and wiped off the table before they can
even talk about it. And I think if your organization is in that situation with a large number of the employees or managers then that's
a pretty bad state for us to be in. Because you've got to get over the hurdle of being able to talk about it to be accepted, and
then the support. The support's almost the thing that comes like right at the end and when I'm talking about support, I just want to be really
clear that not I'm not necessarily talking about really expensive equipment or all these huge changes. Sometimes it's just someone autistic
saying, I really can't handle unexpected phone calls. So please can you not call me without letting me know about it in advance? It can
be so simple, but often you can't even get to that point. Absolutely and well, thank you for and your answers Jess, and for all your
questions, there's lots of questions we haven't got to. What we tend to do is try and take them away, answer them, and get back to you. So
we will endeavour to do that, but it is time to wrap up unfortunately. So, I'm sure you'll all join me in thanking Jess
for her brilliant talk, that was really enjoyable and yeah, incredibly enlightening, and thank you to everyone for
participating. It's kind of just amazing to see how this community's formed and to watch the chat, everybody
interacting and you've all kind of contributed to that. So yeah, it's just like amazing to see, so please come to our next events and
do the same. But yeah, thank you for joining today. It's heartwarming to see, and there'll be a CPD
certificate and for everybody who's joined, we'll get the session recordings out both over email and on LinkedIn. So look out for that
and just to plug again, we have our next Skill Sessions On Thursday the 7th of March and it's all around
demystifying access to work. So please come and join us for that again. It's going to be a really interesting conversation. So yeah,
please join and as I said, if you're not aware of and the dyslexia show in March look it up. We're going to be there and it would be
lovely to see some of you in person. And then the final thing just to mention is, we've actually put out an e-book today on
helping neuroinclusion in the workplace. So it's on LinkedIn. I'm sure we'll probably be sending it out by email as well. But yeah have a
look at it because it's something we've been working on for a while and it's free and widely available. So yeah, please look that up. But
yeah, that's it. We're over time. Thanks so much everybody and really great to see you, and have a great rest of your day.