Neurodivergence

It appears to me that we now have a fantastic grasp of neurodiversity. It is respected and given its appropriate place in society as a necessary celebration of difference. When looking at neurodiversity, we appear to understand that differences in social, cultural, and mental ways of thinking and behaving are acceptable and add value to us culturally. In the DSM-5, mental health conditions are now explored as a spectrum, and this has direct connections with the way neurodiversity is seen and heard. The difference between neurodiversity and mental health conditions is that one is less stigmatized than the other. So how did we come to a place where one set of differences is more valued and accepted than another set of differences, and how do we bring mental health into the light and reduce the stigmatization associated with it? I do not have an answer to this, but something that occurs to me is that people like me who have had an experience of a mental health condition need to begin to celebrate their difference and even take some of the more demeaning names and terms used to describe people with mental health conditions and start to use them as descriptive and powerful ownership of who we are. Let's start to be proud of our differences and own them like never before.