Insights with Bart Vulliamy
Neuroaffirming care :
The future of autism awareness www . BartVulliamy . com @ PhotographieBlack
" Acceptance requires facing that which makes you uncomfortable about us , thinking about why it makes you uncomfortable , and confronting any prejudice at the root of that discomfort .”
- Kassiane S ., Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Autism Acceptance Month ( otherwise known as Autism Awareness Month ) is celebrated in April every year , and while the month heads towards becoming an actually autistic led movement ( or moves away from being corporate led ), much more needs to be done in terms of awareness .
Neuroaffirming ( neurodiversityaffirming ) care is when scientific research and health care values the strengths and differences of autistic people . It does this by promoting the idea of neurodiversity – like the way biodiversity is a natural variation in humans and is vital to our survival as a species .
There is a difference between acceptance and awareness . According to Autistic Self Advocacy Network – “ Acceptance requires facing that which makes you uncomfortable about us , thinking about why it makes you uncomfortable , and confronting any prejudice at the root of that discomfort . To accept us is to make a conscious effort to overcome that prejudice , to recognize that your discomfort with our differences is far more your problem to overcome than ours .”
There still exists harmful myths and stigma against autistic people that awareness won ’ t help to stop . Awareness is knowing that the autistic demographic has struggles , while acceptance seeks to understand the struggles , the root causes , and the systemic issues at hand .
Autism acceptance is meant to lead to positive change , inclusivity , and simultaneously lead to better mental health of autistic and disabled people , but in recent years it ’ s become something else . What started as a movement for betterment has become a hollow , performative act for non-autistic people and companies to talk how much they care about autism , but as soon as the month ends , so does their act .
Autistic people are still the most unemployed of all the disabilities at a staggering 80 % being unemployed or underemployed . Most autistic women will never get a diagnosis or be misdiagnosed , and autistic people are susceptible to abuse and trauma due to behaviour therapies training them to people please .
Neuroaffirming care challenges the traditional model of disability ( the medical model ), which aims to cure disability and reframes it as being a different but equally valuable divergence . Under neuroaffirming care , there is no normal or better , nor is there a bad or a good — only a different variation of how our brains work . Think about how many kinds of
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