Richard has spent his whole career working with autistic adults. He initially worked in a diagnostic assessment service before moving into his current role in an intensive support team for autistic adults. He is a prolific poster in online discussions about neurodiversity, and has written about some of this on his Substack.
In this interview, Richard explained how his experience has enabled him to look beneath behaviour and the formal diagnostic criteria to identify underlying processes common amongst autistic people. He tells us how he thinks that those who criticise concepts such as masking miss the serious impact on autistic people’s lives.
He talks about how he feels that better awareness and less stigma has enabled more people to come forward for diagnostic assessment, and how he sees this as a positive change.
Join Naomi, Richard and I as we wrestle with some of the big questions, such as whether masking is unique to autism, the specificity and reliability of an autism diagnosis, how funding and resources should be allocated and whether we should be talking about diagnosis at all.
We certainly don’t agree on everything, but I do think we manage to hold space for different perspectives and put some of the popular ideas in neurodiversity discourse under the spotlight.
Do let us know what this episode brings up for you.
