Inclusion Needs Recognition, Not Erasure: A Neurodiversity-Affirming Approach

By Helen Edgar (Autistic Realms) following a conversation with David Gray-Hammond (Emergent Divergence), 18th Oct 2025.

👉 Read next: The Problem With Invented Labels by David Gray-Hammond

The recent TES article featuring psychiatrist Sami Timimi (Why ‘invented’ SEND labels are disabling pupils, October 2025) has provoked strong reactions across neurodivergent and educational communities. While it raises important questions about the medicalisation of childhood and the failures of the current SEND system, it also perpetuates deeply harmful narratives that undermine neurodivergent people and risks fuelling policy cuts under the guise of “rethinking support.” Removing neurodiversity from education as suggested, would harm the very children inclusion is meant to protect.

This response is written from a neurodiversity-affirming perspective as a late identified Autistic ADHD person. We need to value lived experience and validate the lives of marginalised people that are already routinely misunderstood and dismissed, and being pushed further to the edges of society, battling for accommodations and support.

Inclusion can’t come from erasure. Removing neurodiversity and diagnosis from education doesn’t create belonging, it silences it. True inclusion means recognising difference, not pretending it isn’t there.

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1. The Problem of Framing & Language

Language matters. Calling Autism and ADHD “invented labels” erases decades of lived experience, research, and community knowledge. Labels aren’t everything but they can go a long way to developing an understanding of yourself whether formally diagnosed or whether you come to the realisation that you may be Autisic/ ADHD and self identify (often due to the barriers around getting a diagnosis in the first place!).

Describing diagnostic categories as simply “brands” or “social constructs” misses the complexity of the issue and reduces something nuanced into an unhelpful either/or view.

All diagnostic systems are socially constructed, the idea of normality is socially constructed. Diagnostic criteria has been created to describe patterns of difference, even though these are so often deficit based. However, social construction does not mean that people are making things up. The neurodiversity paradigm recognises that everyone’s brain works differently. Autistic and ADHD people often experience and express the world in unique ways, in how we pay attention, sense, communicate, socialise, learn, and play which may differ from neuronormative expectations.

To declare that the “cupboard is empty” of genetic or neurological evidence is inaccurate. What’s missing is not evidence of difference, but consensus about how to interpret and support differences and how we relate to each other as humans. When we call lived realities “invented,” we invite disbelief and invalidate lived experience. Disbelief has consequences: delayed assessments, denial of accommodations, parent blame and retraumatisation of those who have fought hard to be understood and find answers and acceptance for their differences.

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2. Systems Disable Us, Not Labels

Timimi argues that diagnostic labels “disable pupils” by locking them into fixed categories and creating a “ticket system” for support. There is a seed of truth in this because in an under-resourced SEND landscape, many families are left fighting for a label to access help and gain accommodations for their child’s education. The system often demands proof of deficit before offering support, despite declaring that it is needs-based.

However, it is not labels that disable us or our children, it is the bureaucratic structure that attaches value and resources to labels rather than to authentic needs. When a child is only seen as deserving of support once labelled, the problem lies with the gatekeeping logic and finances of the institution and system, not the real identity and needs of the child.

Removing labels does not solve this injustice, it risks erasing visibility and human rights. The Children and Families Act 2014, the Equality Act 2010, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities all hinge on recognition of disability as a protected identity. Without diagnostic and validating self identification recognition, many young people would simply fall through the cracks.

• Labels can become barriers when used inflexibly or in a pathologizing way.
• Labels can also be liberating when used to affirm identity, understanding, and belonging when adopting a neuro-affirming approach.

The solution is not to scrap diagnostic language, but to transform how it is used and to embrace and protect the meaning of neuro-affirmative frameworks.

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3. Nothing About us Without Us

Throughout the interview, Timimi dismisses neurodevelopmental research with statements such as:

“I’ve gone through all the genetic evidence; the cupboard is empty.”

This kind of absolute language misrepresents the work our community, the neurodiversity movement and researchers have been advocating for. While Autism and ADHD are heterogeneous and contextually influenced, they are among the most heritable and well-researched neurodevelopmental profiles. Such reductionism perpetuates the ableist notion that unless difference is biologically “proven,” it is not real and also risks the harmful promotion of eugenics.

The neurodiversity paradigm recognises that neurological and environmental factors are inseparable, that human diversity arises through interaction between biology, culture, and experience. The demand for a singular cause misunderstands neurodiversity as pathology rather than a natural variation, where all ways of being are valid and meaningful.

Neurodivergence is not a fad, it is a lived reality shaped by distinct ways of processing, attending, and connecting and perceiving the world. Without diagnostic frameworks, many children would lose legal protection, understanding, and the language to describe their needs and mental health would be further impacted. The impact of this ripples beyond individuals into their families and community.

Taking neurodiversity and diagnosis “out of the picture” as Timimi suggests is not inclusion, it’s erasure. If young people don’t understand their neurodivergent differences and identity it can impact mental well-being. Finding out about your identity in an affirming way can be empowering, it enables you to advocate and find others who are similar, create a sense of belonging and find community which is so important.

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4. The Risk of Erasure

The TES article presents a single authoritative voice speaking about Autistic and ADHD children rather than with them. There is an absence of voices from our actual Autistic community, Autistic adults, advocates, educators, families and young people who experience diagnosis or self-identification as life-saving. It can offer many pathways to better ways of managing their well-being and self-advocacy.

When we erase lived experience from public discourse, we perpetuate epistemic injustice, the denial of people’s authority to speak about their own lives. The neurodiversity movement was born precisely because dominant medical frameworks failed to listen, and it is still happening.

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5. Structural & Systemic Issues Are Real 

Our education and health systems are in crisis. Many children are burned out, anxious, and unsupported. Schools are underfunded; CAMHS waiting lists stretch months and sometimes years; diagnostic pathways are inequitable and still class-biased. These are structural failures that urgently need reform.

Blaming diagnostic language for systemic collapse misses the point. The issue is not that too many children are diagnosed; it is that too few environments are flexible and meet needs. Many of the behaviours pathologised as “symptoms” are adaptive Autistic stress responses to inaccessible settings.

A truly neurodiversity-informed model does not discard diagnosis; it expands beyond it, connecting identity, environment, and systemic change to truly support people’s authentic ways of being and to meet their needs..

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6. The Danger of Policy and Media

Articles that want to take away the need for identity and diagnosis are written from a place of privilege. They risk being used by policymakers to justify reducing assessments, cutting EHCP budgets, and dismissing neurodivergent needs as “trend” or “fad.” Words like “invented” and “commercial brand” will likely not be read in a nuanced context, it risks being weaponised against families already fighting for survival.

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7. Be Compassionate & Neuro-Affirming

The neurodiversity paradigm offers an alternative to deficit-based diagnosis, one that is affirming, relational, ecological, and human rights-based rather than pathologised.

A truly neuro-affirming inclusive system would:

• Integrate neurodiversity education for teachers grounded in lived experience and current research.
• Recognise monotropism and sensory profiles as part of natural human diversity, not pathology.
• Provide support based on needs rather than requiring diagnostic proof.
• Preserve access to diagnosis for those who seek it for self-understanding or legal protection and validate self-identification.
• Shift from “intervention” to accommodation — changing systems and environments before changing people.

This approach aligns with the Autistic SPACE for Inclusive Education (Goldrick et al., 2025) and An Experience Sensitive Approach to Care With and for Autistic Children and Young People (Mc Greevey et al., 2024) It moves beyond labels without erasing the people who inhabit them.

See also: SPACE-TIME: A Monotropism Informed Framework for Autistic People

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8. Embrace Difference

The heart of neurodiversity is not medical assessments or political campaigns but being human and ethical. It is about recognising that people differ and that we need to support and embrace those differences.

To be Autistic or ADHD is to move through the world with different rhythms of attention, different ways of sensing, and different routes to connection, communication, socialising, playing, working, and learning. These differences can cause profound distress in inaccessible environments, but they are also sources of creativity and focus and can enable people to thrive when supported.

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Critical debate is healthy, we need conversations about neurodivergence and the failures of the SEND system if we are to move forwards and create more supportive environments for our children.

Autism and ADHD are not corporate inventions. They are lived realities situated in both biology and culture, they are shaped by systems that can harm or heal.

When we reduce people’s experiences to “constructed brands,” we re-enact the very epistemic violence that the neurodiversity movement exists to undo. Let’s move the conversation forward, not back to disbelief, but toward understanding and neuro-affirmative practice, where we can create a society where everyone can truly thrive.

Find out more:
Labels, Power and Privilege

Labels

Identity Politics

Protecting the Meaning of Neuro-Affirming Practice

Challenges for Autistic & Neurodivergent Families Navigating the SEND System: We Need to Understand the Double Empathy Problem & Embrace Monotropism

Nothing About Us Without Us: Autistic-Led Organisations, Charities & Social Media to Follow

Neuro-Affirming Research in Practice: Supporting Autistic Students, Embracing Monotropism In The Classroom And Beyond

Neuro-affirming Language & Glossaries

Power

Privilege