Why does the media think it's alright to shame neurodivergent people?

The media commenting on the mental and neurological health of neurodivergent persons is nothing new to me. Years ago, Kathie Lee and Hoda mocked misophonia as “miso-phoney” and made us the butt of her joke. I had hoped things would get better, but instead the world is getting much much worse. What’s even more horrific is that some of the voices are DOCTORS or PSYCHOLOGISTS! This is incredibly horrifying to see as an advocate for neurodivergence and a therapist.

The world has dubbed neurodivergence as the new political fodder. Rather than ignoring us chronically like they did in the past, politicians and media-spokespersons are now reconsidering ADHD, Autism, misophonia and more: as a scape-goat and punchline.

Consider this newspaper, column that outwardly calls thousands of neurodivergent women (who by the way have a statistically harder time getting diagnosed) deluded: “Thousands of women, like Lily, who claim to have ADHD are deluded”.

This headline is so outrageous and cruel that I hardly have to make a point about it. Anybody with eyes (I’d hope) would be able to understand that calling diagnosed persons “deluded” is harmful, cruel, and dare I say, deluded. Then we have ‘expert’ Uta Frith demanding that autism itself is misunderstood and now over-labelled. Personally, I am not autistic or ADHD, but I am neurodivergent. I have never met the criteria for autism despite scoring maxiumum on the sensory threshold. If autism were being misdiagnosed or applied to outliers, I would most certainly have been diagnosed years ago, but I digress.

What I wonder is what there is to gain by questioning neurodivergence and trying to further muddy the waters on public acceptance. If individuals are suffering and are neurodivergent, should they not then have support and accommodations? Why are neurotypical persons so terrified of the so called “boom” of autism and ADHD? Is it really so terrifying to think that education, jobs, and public locations are adapted to suit those with neurodivergence? Once again, it becomes apparent that the confusion between neurotypicals and neurodivergent goes far past double-empathy, in order to have the double empathy problem, the neurotypicals would have to have empathy.