BRATTLEBORO — Dr. Mel Houser, physician and founder of All Brains Belong VT, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting neurodivergent individuals, took the time to answer questions about what it means to be neurodivergent, how this affects access to health care and what resources are available for Southern Vermonters. We all have different brains.
We all have different brains that learn, think, communicate, move through the world — experience the world differently. However, not everyone is neurodivergent. Neurodivergence refers to at least one in five people whose brains work in ways that significantly depart from neuronormativity, meaning the type of brain that society has deemed normal, that society and culture have deemed normative.
But it's wrong, right? So society has deemed something normative, that "this is the way that a brain should be" — that's not based in science. We know that so many different paths in this world are delivered in a — "there's one lane to go down" — it's one size, fits all. So when I say neurodivergent, I'm referring to the at least one in five people whose brains work in ways that significantly depart from that, from the ways in which society most often caters to.
Like many late-identified autistic adults, I got my autism diagnosis in the context of autistic burnout, which is a very common experience for autistic people of all ages, really. That is a consequence of not having your access needs met for long periods of time. At that time, I was.