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Autism and the Stigmas of Living with an Invisible Disability
Autism, at least for the less severely impaired, has been called an “invisible disability.” This is because the challenges faced by autistics are not as readily evident as those of other disabilities. A visually impaired person, or one using a wheelchair, is immediately seen as someone facing...
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Helping Autistic Teens Thrive: Shifting the Focus from Stigma to Strength
In recent years, our understanding of autism has grown. Yet, despite this progress, many autistic individuals—especially teens—continue to face negative stigmas and outdated assumptions (Turnock & Langley, 2023). Adolescence is already a time of major change and self-discovery, and for...
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Wellbeing as a Protective Factor: Reducing Stigma and Centering Joy
There’s a deeply ingrained belief in our society, rarely said aloud but often reinforced, that autistic people can’t be happy. It shows up in lowered expectations, social exclusion, and systems that treat disability as a barrier to flourishing. This message is at the core of stigma, and it’s...
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From Exclusion to Belonging: Confronting Stigma Through Disability Education in Schools
Today’s classrooms are more neurodiverse than ever before. In the U.S., over 15% of public school students receive special education services (National Center for Education Statistics, 2024), and many more have diverse learning profiles that go unrecognized. Schools have made strides in...
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Combating Stigma Through Community: AABR’s Program Without Walls Builds Inclusion and Purpose
At AABR, we envision a world where people of all abilities are beloved and respected — a world built not on separation but connection. Our Program Without Walls (PWW) is helping shape that world by placing adults with autism and developmental disabilities in real-life community settings where...
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Natural Supports: A Lifeline for Families Like Mine
In 2024, my world changed forever. I lost my father to prostate cancer—a man whose strength and love defined the very foundation of my family. He fought with everything he had to stay alive long enough to care for my mom, who was battling dementia. Even as his own health declined, he dedicated...
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More Than Work: Autism, Stigma, and the Power of Belonging
What could karaoke possibly have to do with autism and workplace stigma? We’ll get to that, but first, allow us to explain what we do for a living. We are both privileged to work in the Employment Program at an agency called Job Path, where we match people with autism and other disabilities...
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Becoming the Person I Once Needed
I often think to myself, “I do this so that no other autistic child has to go through what I went through.” As an autism researcher with a background in social psychology, I’ve developed a pretty good understanding of stigma over time. But it wasn’t any article, study, course, or the...
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The Neurodiversity Movement: Promoting Acceptance and Understanding
Diversity is a cornerstone of human society, encompassing the range of identities, experiences, and backgrounds people bring to their communities. This includes differences in ability, race, gender, age, and more. For people with intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD), diversity also...
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Medicaid Cuts Will Put People Like Me at Risk
My name is Jimmy Tucker. I have a learning disability, and I am on the autism spectrum. In school and in adult life, I never felt like I fit in. I’ve always felt different, and that made things harder for me. But Medicaid-funded programs have helped me find my way. These are the supports I rely...
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A Two-Way Street: Society and the Neurodiverse Community
Over 50 years ago, there were several theories in the area of social psychology put forth that I have been thinking more about lately. Like vinyl records, Polaroid cameras, and fanny packs, they can be worth pulling out and reexamining in order to help illuminate the complicated process of how...
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Calm Minds, Ready to Learn: Empowering Children with Relaxation Training
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) encompasses a wide range of challenges, particularly in social communication, sensory integration, and self-regulation. Children with ASD struggle to regulate sensory input: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, vestibular, and proprioceptive input. They also struggle to...
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Autism Laws and Policies: How Legal Protections Can Prevent Stigmatization and Support Advocacy Efforts
Over the past 50 years, autism laws and policies have supported the needs and rights of individuals living with autism spectrum disorder. They have protected access to healthcare, education, employment, housing, and community integration. The lives of people with autism have been improved; their...
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Unmasking the Mask: Breaking Free from Stigma to Embrace Authentic Autistic Identity
This article explores masking in autism, defined as the practice of suppressing autistic traits to conform to societal expectations. Specifically, it examines how stigma reinforces masking, oftentimes leading to emotional exhaustion and complex mental health struggles. To challenge stigma, this...
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Autism Rights, Wrongs, and Acceptance: A Two-Way Street
Though I was diagnosed autistic as an infant, I was unaware I was different until second grade, when I was shuffled between special and regular education classes, when I decided, mostly on my own, that I would transition to mainstream school. While I was a great student throughout my scholastic...
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Reframing Pathological Demand Avoidance: A Neurodiversity-Affirming Perspective
Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) is an unnecessary and dehumanizing label. It has become frequently mentioned in the autism community as a new diagnostic label often driven by anxiety and a need for control describing adamant refusal of everyday demands, often driven by anxiety and/or need for...
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Studying Us to Death: The Lethal Cost of Autism Research Without Autistic Investigators
I was formally diagnosed with autism and ADHD at the age of 44. I finally had an explanation for why so many things in my life seemed so much harder for me than for others. There was a reason I often felt like the people around me were having two conversations – one with words that I had full...
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Research Meets Reality TV: How the Media Stigmatizes Autism and Why it Matters
Depictions of autism in the media—whether fictional or nonfictional—influence the wider public’s perception of autism, both positively and negatively. Two of the more well-known portrayals of autism are Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory as well Raymond Babbitt, the historically common...
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Elderly Autistic Adults Face Increased Risk of Dementia and Parkinson’s Disease — Postmortem Brain Research May Reveal Why
What is the evidence that autistic individuals are more likely to get an age-related disease? A 2021 study published in Autism Research (1) based on an analysis of Medicaid records in the United States found that autistic individuals were 2.6 times more likely to be diagnosed with early-onset...
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Co-Mentorship: A Catalyst for Fighting Stigma and Career Success
Autistic professionals bring critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and unique insight to the workforce. Yet many face persistent stigma and misunderstanding that hinder their full participation in professional spaces. Misconceptions about communication styles, social behavior, and sensory...
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Bridging the Gap: Improving Health Care Access for Autistic Patients
People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) face significant health care disparities and stigma in accessing appropriate care, contributing to markedly reduced life expectancy. Research indicates that autistic individuals experience premature mortality at rates two to ten times higher than the...
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Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Parents with Autistic Children
Being a parent or a caregiver of a child with autism can present great challenges, often affecting the parent or caregiver’s psychological and physical well-being, especially their stress and depressive symptoms (Lunskey, 2017). Parents report feelings of despair, sadness, anger, denial, and...
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It Is Time to Remove Stigma from Autism Interventions
Historically, autism has been blamed for the challenges autistic people face. Struggling to stay in school? Get a job? Make friends? “It's because of the autism.” The belief is this: If autistic people are trained to behave like someone without autism, they will face fewer challenges. Under...
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How Stigma Creates Invisible Barriers for Autistic Individuals in Healthcare
As more individuals are diagnosed with/identify as autistic, societal awareness continues to grow. With the neurodiversity perspective, which views neurological differences as natural variations rather than deficits, also gaining recognition (Pellicano & den Houting, 2022), the U.S. healthcare...
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Autism and Speech Therapy: Evolving Perspectives
My training as a speech-language therapist tells me that my job is to treat communication deficits in autistic people. I tell them, “Point to the triangle and then the circle.” I verbally model the phrase “I want,” and wait for a response. I read them social stories, encourage them to...
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Living at Home as an Autistic Adult: When Society Confuses Support with Failure
While many neurotypical adults move away from home at some point in their 20s, many autistic adults like me may live at home well into their later adult years (Marsack-Topolewski et al., 2021). This isn’t because we’re failing but rather because we need more time to reach our various milestones...
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Neurodiversity is the New Trend!
Despite the fact that I managed to successfully earn my PhD while also managing to earn multiple awards as both a researcher and an author, I still find it mind-boggling when I’m given a puzzled look when I state that I am a Neurodiverse learner. Yet, whenever I say I grew up receiving special...
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Breaking the Silence: A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) for Autistic Children
Imagine your child has thoughts, feelings, and ideas but struggles to say them out loud. For many parents of children on the autism spectrum, this is a daily experience. This is where Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) can help. What is AAC? Augmentative and Alternative...
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Increasing Autism Awareness and Reducing the Stigma of Autism in China
Autism Awareness Month, mandated by the United Nations (UN), provides an opportunity for scholars, community service providers, and the broader public to come together to increase community knowledge of autism. These events may help to reduce the stigma that surrounds this complex...
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Insights from Amy Gravino: Autism and Sexuality Awareness and Advocacy
For millennia, sexuality has remained one of the most stigmatized and overlooked topics in the autism community, particularly when it comes to autistic adults. This stigma largely stems from decades of misinformation and a lack of understanding. In this interview, I speak with leading autism...
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How Digital Health Ecosystems Are Shaping the Future of I/DD Support
The disability service sector finds itself at a crossroads. The current federal administration is working with Congress to reduce the size of government and overall spending levels. It is likely that this will affect Medicaid Long Term Service and Supports in many states, creating concern within...
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Autistic Lived Experience: My Government Is Waging War on Me and on My Community
Not that there has ever been a good time to be autistic, considering how society has pathologized us for decades now because of our differences, though to be autistic and living today in the USA has been particularly punishing in light of the current administration's toxic rhetoric about us and...
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Challenge of Being an Autistic Higher Education Teacher in Brazil
This article discusses the challenge of including autistic teachers in higher education in Brazil, highlighting the scarcity of people diagnosed with autism working as university professors. In addition to these scarce university professors with autism, the first author of the article has the same...
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The Neurodiversity Movement: Promoting Acceptance and Understanding Through Employee Resource Groups
Devereux is known for its 112-year history of providing compassionate, evidence-based clinical care and treatment of neurodiverse individuals. The nonprofit is equally committed to fostering a welcoming workplace environment for its employees, many of whom are also neurodivergent. One way...
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Navigating Autism and Stigma in the Hispanic Community
In many Hispanic and Latino communities, stigma around autism remains a painful barrier to support. From whispered judgments at family gatherings to systemic bias in healthcare settings, families often face an uphill battle to accessing services and feeling supported and understood. Georgina...
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Scientific Setbacks: Medical Stigma and Political Interference Threaten Autism Healthcare
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently said many autistic children were “fully functional” and “regressed … into autism when they were 2 years old. And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll...
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The Never-Ending Cycle: Autism, Stigma, and the Cost of Late Diagnosis
What actually constitutes as a late diagnosis for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been up for debate for years. Some studies and institutions cite any diagnosis after 12 years of age as being the cut-off (Hoxworth, 2022), whereas some argue it could be as young as three (Russell et al., 2025)....
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Empowering Resilience: How Occupational Therapy Supports Autistic Adolescents with Depression
Adolescence can be a challenging time for anyone, but for Autistic teens, the journey can come with unique emotional, social, and sensory hurdles. Depression is more common among Autistic youth than their neurotypical peers, often going undiagnosed or misunderstood. Research shows Autistic...
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Behind the Behavior: Stigma, Misunderstanding, and the Emerging Profile of Pathological Demand Avoidance
“Stigma is the process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity.” - Erving Goffman When a child resists instruction, lashes out under pressure, or refuses school altogether, the dominant narrative still points toward oppositional defiance, behavioral reinforcement systems, or a...
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Empathy through Film: Annual Disability Film Festival at Pace University Engages Non-Autistic Students
Colleges do not contribute enough education about autistics. Films about autistics can be effective, however, in impactful learning for non-autistic students. Pace University is doing this by engaging non-autistic students through an annual Celebration of People with Disabilities in Art, Films and...
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The Mental Health Effects of Autism Stigma
Autism, in itself, is not a disorder of mental health. Yet autistic people are disproportionately affected by depression, anxiety, and suicidality. The connection is not biological alone — it is social. Much of the psychological distress experienced by autistic individuals stems from how they are...
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Activities to Try While Waiting for Occupational Therapy Services
When diagnosed with ASD, children are often referred to occupational therapy (OT) services due to common limitations experienced with self-care, feeding, sleeping routines, play skills, social development, fine and gross motor skills, sensory processing, emotional regulation, and executive...