← Blog posts BOOKING
Defining Neurodiversity as a Disease Is Sick

Defining Neurodiversity as a Disease Is Sick

neurodiversityneurodivergencemedicinesocietyequality

Susa Tyrniluoto, 7 March 2026

Modern medicine has repeatedly tried to subordinate and suppress groups that the dominant population has not accepted as equal human beings. Women, disabled people, people with non-normative sexuality, and neurodivergent people have been oppressed, humiliated and shamed to varying degrees throughout the history of modern medicine, and this still continues to varying degrees.

Today, the rights of women and disabled people are acknowledged somewhat better, and sexuality is no longer usually defined as a disease, but the treatment of people with neurodivergent traits is still intolerable.

In medicine, neurodivergence is often defined as a developmental disorder or disease, even though without people with neurodivergent traits, the modern world would not exist. Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein are all described in ways that suggest traits that medicine might classify as neurodivergent.

The question can also be turned upside down. What if traits defined as neurotypical are themselves an evolutionary disturbance?

Neurotypical traits include the ability to make long-term plans and carry them out consistently.

Neurodivergent traits often include sensitivity toward other people and animals, the ability to listen, the ability to live intensely in the present moment, creative problem-solving, a strong sense of justice, creativity and inventiveness.

Research suggests that these groups differ especially in communication style. Both groups can usually communicate fluently with people from their own group, but communication between groups often causes problems. If one interprets sustained eye contact as aggressive and the other interprets avoiding eye contact as impolite, understanding each other is already difficult from the start.

The first step toward a healthier society would be an apology from modern medicine for how it has treated those of us it has labelled sick and underdeveloped.

It is of course clear that neurodivergent traits can create challenges in everyday life, but if different neurodivergent traits were seen as natural evolutionary variation instead of disease, we could fix the actual problem - social structures that create those challenges - instead of forcing neurodivergent people into neurotypical molds, for example with amphetamine-derivative ADHD medication.

Links and further reading