Chloe’s short video on the importance of language – focusing on the identity first preference of Autistic people
In the binKeep, practice, and role model
Person with autism
On the spectrum
 Autism

Disease
Disorder
Illness
Mental illness
Problem
Issue
Deficit
Impairment
Pathological 
 
Challenging
 
 
Violent
 
 
Low functioning
High functioning
Severe/mild autism
 
 
Traits
Symptoms
Risk of autism
 
Cure
Treatment
Intervention
Strategies
 

Behaviour
 
 
Special interests
Autistic person
 
 

Neurodevelopmental difference
Neurodivergence
Difference
 
 
 

 
 
 
Challenged by e.g. the environment

 
Anxious; distressed; meltdown
 

Support need/s – and be specific
 
 
 

Experience/s; expression/s
 
 



(JUST AVOID) Improve wellbeing (not change autism)
 
 
Feelings/emotions – inner world
 

Specialisation/s

A rose by any other name would smell…of stigma (or, the psychologically important difference between being a “person with autism” or an Autistic person)…

This video accompanies an invited article for University College London

Question: Is identifying with social groups beneficial to people’s health and wellbeing? Whilst marking undergrad essays on this question back in 2020 – my mind began to wander, as it is prone to do, to Autistic things. Although my PhD was in the field of social psychology – where I attempted to reduce mental health stigma with the neurodiversity narrative – I had become so engrossed in my little sliver of the field I forgot about other social psychological theories and approaches. I researched the references my students were citing and made a short Twitter thread of my thoughts regarding the psychologically important difference between being a “person with autism” and an Autistic person. The difference between belonging to a stigmatised group, and the social cure properties of strongly identifying with an Autistic identity…article continued here.

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