As we kick off neurodiversity celebration week, ICSMSU and Imperial’s Neurodiversity Society have decided to shine a spotlight on the voices of neurodivergent members of our community.

As the NDsoc’s education officer, I am excited to get the opportunity for us to explore the topic of neurodiversity within our medical school.

Neurodiversity in medicine isn’t new. It is my firm belief that, for as long as there has been medicine there have been neurodivergent people studying it.

In fact, medical schools select for neurodivergent traits (1). Those traits you honed for the UCAT and reeled off in interviews (pattern-seeking (2), empathy (3), creative problem-solving (4)) are neurodivergent strengths. It’s not a stretch to assume that many of us, chosen specifically for possessing these strengths, will therefore be neurodivergent.

It’s strange then, that up until very recently, we didn’t discuss it. It was always there, and perhaps we had some notion of it, but we never really had the language to talk about it or support it.

Historically, as a profession, we’ve been slow to include new voices and perspectives. We get set in our ways, afraid that anything that changes the status quo might compromise patient safety. That’s why many people have felt afraid to share their neurodivergence, for fear of being challenged on their difference and their capabilities. This has isolated a vast group of our population.

The irony is that anyone who has worked within the NHS will have encountered a huge range of neurotypes; each with a different perspective and approach. Neurodivergent people are more than capable of being successful doctors, and what’s more, are a cornerstone of the NHS.

But there’s also more to neurodiversity than the people who identify as neurodivergent. The thing that people often don’t realise is that neurodiversity encompasses everyone. It isn’t just a handful of diagnoses or discrete boxes that people fall into, making them identical to one another. It’s the sum of all our neurotypes, the interaction of our strengths and weaknesses with our experiences and our personalities. It’s a spectrum that we all fall onto somewhere.

Neurodiversity is what keeps the NHS running. It’s what makes some people better at certain specialities, roles and responsibilities, and other people suited to others. The wider the range of our neurotypes, the better equipped we are to handle different challenges. Without neurodiversity, the NHS would crumble.

This is why we need to start celebrating it. We need to learn how to communicate and work with people across the spectrum of neurodiversity so that we can use our strengths to support each other’s weaknesses.

This is why this week we will be posting blogs written by students who have taken the time to share their experiences with us.

Our neurodiversity here at Imperial is one of our greatest strengths- please help us to embrace it.

Amy Lloyd Evans, 3^rd year medical student.

1. McCowan, S. et al. (2021) ‘Vive la difference! Celebrating and supporting autistic psychiatrists with autistic doctors international’, BJPsych Open, 7(S1), pp. S40–S40. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2021.157.
2. Crespi, B. (2021) ‘Pattern Unifies Autism’, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.621659.
3. Shalev, I. and Uzefovsky, F. (2020) ‘Empathic disequilibrium in two different measures of empathy predicts autism traits in neurotypical population’, Molecular Autism, 11(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-020-00362-1.
4. Stolte, M. et al. (2022) ‘Characterizing Creative Thinking and Creative Achievements in Relation to Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder’, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.909202.