Neurodiversity & Mental Health

Page Summary in a Sentence
This is an ever evolving page of resources suggested by people who identify with the neurodiverse community focusing on Mental Health.

General Resources
Coping Strategies
Talking About & Identifying Emotions
Issues Eating
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD)

General Resources

Short film as part of a series of young people using mental health services at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust focusing on neurodiversity, it covers many topics and hears from practitioners, service users, and people with lived experiences of different types of neurodiversity.

The Guide to Good Mental Health on the Autism Spectrum by Jeanette Purkis, Dr Emma Goodall, and Dr Jane Nugent

Two of the authors are on the autism spectrum themselves and, as a result, this book provides an insightful and understanding guide for autistic mental health and wellbeing. This is a fantastic and easy to read guide covering many different topics, from anxiety and depression to the value of pets and helpful strategies to aid in mental health and wellbeing.

Comorbid Mental Health Conditions

A live stream from How To ADHD with viewers questions and featuring clinical psychologist and ADHD researcher Dr Patrick LaCount discussing the comorbidities that come with ADHD.

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Coping Strategies

Stories That Never Stand Still

A free to download workbook designed for and by teenagers with ADHD with the ADHD Foundation. It covers a lot, from the struggles to the positives of having ADHD. In the booklet you will find many different sections, such as: The A to Z of ADHD and A Letter to a Younger ADHDer. However, the book has many pages focusing in on coping skills, such as:

  • The Art of Calm which is “a guide on how to keep cool, calm and collected, when a ARGH moment strikes.”
  • Dealing With It which explore ” four challenges of ADHD: Anxiety, Anger, Stress and Frustration and offer[s] some thoughts on how to deal with them,”
  • Phone: Friend or Foe which looks at ways our phones can help us “keep on top of our ADHD” and how to manage how they can be tools for procrastination.
  • It even has A Quiet Colouring Page just for some simple and immediate mindful relaxation.

‘Stories that Never Stand Still’ [is] a book celebrating what’s amazing and annoying, fun and funny, incredibly inspiring and wonderfully weird about ADHD. Sharing stories, struggles and achievements, this book gives you an opportunity to learn or remind yourself about the positives of having an ADHD brain.

Dr Tony Lloyd – CEO ADHD Foundation

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Talking About & Identifying Emotions

YouTuber Amythest Schaber talks about alexithymia, which entails problems identifying, distinguishing between, and expressing emotions which is something some neurodivergent people can struggle with.
Yo Samdy Sam discusses her own experience with alexithymia.
Ella and Ros discuss their personal experiences and strategies in understanding and communicating emotions.
Jessica from How to ADHD discuss how ADHD, emotional dysregulation, and how to manage emotions.

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Issues Eating

Sam, a neurodiverse YouTuber from YouTube channel Yo Samdy Sam, discusses anxiety around food, eating, and aversions to foods.
Pooky discusses the interplay between autism and anorexia that can occur from both a personal and general perspective.
eeemeals discusses the link between and her experiences of Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) and autism, introducing both what ARFID is generally and giving her own personal story and how it relates to her autism.
Molly discusses her personal experience of binge eating and its relationship to her ADHD and the impulsivity and how getting an ADHD diagnosis helped with this.

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Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD)

Jessica from How to ADHD discusses rejection sensitivity, emotional regulation, and how this relates to ADHD. She talks about her own experience throughout the video and talks with Caroline Maguire who developed a tool to help manage rejection sensitivity. It’s a super validating video.

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Suggestions & Recommendations
We hope you find what you need here, but as Practical Neurodiversity is a really new project and because neurodiversity is so expansive, we will unfortunately not have resources on every topic; so, if there is something you see elsewhere that you feel we should add or if there are resources you would like us to help you find, just let us know by using the form below.

Important Note
As we update and categorise this list some resources may be mentioned more than once due to their overlap between context and certain resources may appear under multiple subheadings of neurotype due to the complex overlaps between neurodiverse ways of experiencing and knowing the world, and we also just want to make sure you are able to find what you are looking for too.

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