CATChat 20: Mental Health and Neurodiversity Series Introduction

In this CATChat episode, Ian, Krysia and Zoe introduce our upcoming 3 month series on Neurodiversity and Mental health. 

The transcript of the episode is available here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/ff2bac3a/transcript.txt

If you have any questions, or just want to say hi, email us at [e-mail] or find us on twitter @autismtheology.

This podcast is brought to you by The University of Aberdeen's Centre for Autism and Theology.

Website: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/sdhp/cat

The artwork for this podcast uses the Centre for Autism and Theology Logo, created by Holly Russel

Helplines mentioned:
C.A.L.L: Website: https://www.callhelpline.org.uk/; Telephone: [phone]; Text: Text help to 81066
CALM: Website: https://www.thecalmzone.net/help/get-help/; Telephone number: 0800 58 58 58

SHOUT: Website: https://giveusashout.org/ Text: Text ‘SHOUT’ to 85285
Dyslexia Scotland Helpline: 0344 800 8484
Brittish Dyslexia Association Helpline: 0333 405 4567

US National Suicide Helpline: 988
Prosper: https://www.prosperhealth.io/

Creators and Guests

Host

Ian Lasch

PhD candidate at the university of Aberdeen researching autism and the Imago Dei

Host

Krysia Waldock

Autistic PhDer: autism, belonging & religion. Assistant lecturer in RS @relstudieskent. Research assistant @UniKentCyberSec. Own views. she/they ;

Host

Zoe Strong

PhD candidate at Aberdeen Uni studying dyslexia and engaging with the Bible. @SGSAH funded. @CumberlandLodge fellow. Autism and Theology Podcast host.

What is Autism and Theology Podcast?

The Autism and Theology Podcast is a space where we engage with the latest conversations in the field of autism and theology, share relevant resources, and promote ways in which both faith and non-faith communities can enable autistic people to flourish.

Our episodes are released on the first Wednesday of every month. We have a variety of guests who are related in some way to the field of autism and theology. Some are academics, others are people with life stories to share, and some are both!

We also release CATChat every third Wednesday of the month. These are shorter and more informal episodes where your hosts will share news and give you as listeners an opportunity to ask questions and share your stories.

Zoe: Welcome to the Autism and Theology Podcast, brought to you by the Center for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

Hello I'm Zoe, and it's great that you've joined us this week. This podcast is a space where we engage with the latest conversations in the field of autism and theology, share relevant resources, and promote ways that help faith and non-faith communities enable autistic people to flourish.

This podcast is run from the University of Aberdeen Center for Autism and Theology, which we've shortened to CAT in today's CATChat episodes. Krysia Ian and I are gonna be introducing our upcoming series on mental health and neurodiversity. There's an increasing awareness that autistic and other neurodivergent people are at a higher risk of experiencing mental health challenges for a variety of reasons.

We had our episode with Henna Cundill last June, I think, where she spoke about her research and autism, prayer and anxiety, and that topic seemed to be of interest to a lot of our listeners. The center also had a panel discussion back in December on mental health and neurodiversity. And again, this sparked a lot of interest and really resonated with a lot of people.

So we hope this series equips people with a better understanding of the challenges autistic people and other neurodivergent people face in this area, and how barriers to participation can also enhance mental health challenges. So we have three episodes planned, um, over the coming months that'll address.

Neurodiversity and mental health, but we wanted to just kick off with a little introduction chat about our thoughts on mental health and neurodiversity. Um, so yeah, do either of you wanna kick us off with why you feel it's important to think about autism and neurodiversity for neurodivergent people, but also just church communities and other communities more broadly?

Krysia: Yeah, because I think for me, having done quite a bit of work on what it means to be included, participate, and belong in faith communities, one of when you look at the academic literature that actually having these barriers to inclusion actually is a massive contributor to. Poor mental health, and this is not just a neurodivergent specific thing.

This is very much a broad thing. And actually it was something that very much was found inadvertently in my own research where people said they, where they didn't feel included, where they didn't feel like they had people who got them, who were kind of like them or who understood them actually, they then did feel very much not supported by their faith community.

So I think for me, there's that intrinsic link of kind of being a part and having that support. And there's also support to be who you are as well. And I think this is gonna link to some of the episodes that we're gonna do, where we're gonna talk a bit about masking and be kind of putting forward either a more neurotypical front or a front to protect yourself where you can't be authentic because it's not.

Either you don't feel safe to be authentic or it's the, it's not facilit for you at that particular moment in time.

Ian: Yeah. And um, and, and part of the reason, at least to me that this is so vitally important is because it's almost like there's a double barrier there, right? So, because neurodivergent people live in a neurotypical world with neuro normative expectations that I. That leads to, we know, statistically speaking, higher incidents of mental health challenges among neurodivergent individuals.

But the, that problem is compounded by the fact that when neurodivergent individuals seek out mental health supports, most of the time those supports are geared towards neurotypicals, right? Or built around neurotypical neuron normative assumptions. So oftentimes you will hear a lot of. Um, uh, neurodivergent individuals say, I've tried therapy and it wasn't for me, or I tried it and it didn't work, or it didn't, you know, it didn't help me.

Um, and that's true because the, because the vast majority of, of mental health support that's out there. Is built for people who are not neurodivergent, right? And so it, it becomes an, it, it becomes a double challenge because even if you're neurodivergent and you recognize the weight of the mental health issues that you are facing often when you, when you try to seek out help, it's not really help That's helpful.

It's not geared towards you. It's not intended for you as the audience or as the, as the patient, so to speak.

Krysia: Yeah, definitely. And I think neurodivergent distress isn't well understood both within faith communities, but also more broadly as well. And even when we, obviously we come, all three of us come from different parts of the world where there's slightly different kind of health systems at play as the NHS in England and Scotland operates slightly differently.

And obviously there's a different system in America completely. There's still that underlying thread throughout all three of them were a lot of the time that neurodivergent distress and quite reasonable responses to being misunderstood and having extra load and having to go do do that bit extra as a neurodivergent person in a neuron normative world is completely misunderstood.

And often not well managed. There are people who do it and who can do it well, but overall there is that burden there.

Zoe: Yeah, absolutely. And. I wonder as well, like how much of what you've both kind of said about, um, professionals and people actually like knowing what it means to be neurodivergent, like the specific needs of neurodivergent people when it comes to mental health, um, support and I think as well, so much of it comes down to like individuals and like, um, individuals who understand and training.

And so much of that can be like luck I guess. Um, unless you're specifically finding someone, um, who specializes in neurodiversity, whether that's autism or whatever else, like. Um, that so depends on, on, yeah. I guess some of it's just luck in some ways of who you get and what they know. Um, yeah. I think for me, especially like in my research on dyslexia, I think it's, I.

Mental health is something that's very much overlooked, especially in faith communities. Um, I think like it's probably similar across the board with neurodiversity. Like, um, you see a neurodivergent person and you see the sort of immediate like, oh, being dyslexic means this, being autistic means this. And it's kind of like, well, let's address the, these challenges that they face.

Something, um, I've probably mentioned on here, um, my. Colleague, Cody, Cody Crawshaw and I have this idea concept of dwelling in the problem, um, where we talk about how so often people rush to find solutions because it's like, oh, that's a dyslexic person who struggles to read. Let's throw a resource at them. Or, well, this person's anxious, let's help them.

But often I think churches are particularly guilty of this, we don't kind of sit with people and listen to their experience, listen to the underlying things that are going on. Um. Because that's, you can give a dyslexic person the dyslexia friendly Bible that might help them to read the Bible, but does that address all of their feelings of not being good enough of, um, comparing their self themselves to others?

Um, it might help a little bit, but it probably doesn't get to the bottom of it. And I think that's why I'm so passionate in like church context especially of just like asking people about their experience and not just assuming you can help. Um, and yeah, not. Not forgetting that neurodivergent people are at higher risk of experiencing mental health challenges and taking that very, very seriously.

Um, so yeah, I think that's, I find it so interesting, like in my own research. I did kind of suspect I would find a lot of mental health stuff, but like it was overwhelming. Like I think either every single one of my participants or all but one mentioned feelings of being stupid or not good enough. And I just think like, what does that do to your mental health if you're going through life?

Like one of my participants talked about, um, like how proving that they're not stupid has been their life's work. And it's like that is, yeah, the impact. On mental health is huge and it does come back to so many barriers and to participation that people face.

Like it's important across the board no matter how big the impact is or how small. Um, so yeah. That's kind of my thoughts.

Krysia: Definitely. Yeah. No, I was gonna completely agree with you, especially when we give, and something that really struck me when you were talking was it's almost like when we give people that dyslexia friendly bible or we give something to ameliorate the problem, we're helping them to become more of the ideal worshiper fit neural norms, rather than thinking, how can we actually get to the root of what's going on here?

I think when I'm talking about what's going on, it's actually the expectations of what we have of people and how they mismatch with what people's gifts, talents, strengths, capacities are in a way.

And I think that it's that mismatch, and that's what I kind of found in my research, which then leads people to feel excluded and find community elsewhere quite a bit of the time. Be it a fringe community or they leave fifth communities altogether, or they spend some time on the fringes of a church or a mosque or kind of doing things their way.

Um, and I think. When we look at what it means to, in, it's particularly in a Christian context, when we look about what it means to be church, it's when two or more of us gather. Right, so which means it's not necessarily about performing a certain way, it's just being together. So it's almost like we need to deconstruct a little bit expectations, and I know that's really quite a big thing to ask anyone to do, but I guess by starting the conversation through this mental health series.

It allows us to start people who are interested or curious or do want to know more to. Ooh, that's really interesting. Let me have a think about that. 'cause certainly from my experience. There is generally a mismatch in what people know and kind of what they want to know and how they know how to find it.

A lot of the time, especially kind of a lot of information around things to do with being autistic, being neurodivergent more broadly, the neurodiversity paradigm, neurodivergence, um, reasonable adjustments, how we might do church differently. Sometimes it's quite siloed. And we don't necessarily share everything around because we like to hold onto it ourselves.

And that's something I feel very passionately about, that we need better ecumenical discussion and interfaith discussion on this. Um, so I guess some of the things that I'm kind of coming forward with are just, this is just such an important space to start from basically.

Zoe: Yeah. And just while you were speaking, I was thinking about, um, John Swinton.

I mean, it's about dementia. It's not speaking specifically about what we were talking about, but he talks about, um, people with dementia and says like, there are. People with dementia who are Christians. But if you're looking around your church and not seeing them, you need to look at yourself and think, what is the problem?

Why are they not coming to my church? And I think the same can be said here, like if you're sat thinking, oh, well I don't think this is a problem in communities like. Maybe like that space to look inward and think, why aren't these people, why aren't there people with mental health challenges in my church, um, who are also neuro divergent?

And I think that's a real challenge to think about in this series as well. And I think that's where what Krysia said about sharing resources and discussing things across communities is so important. 'cause we can see like what practices, um, are meaning that people who are struggling are not coming into the building.

Um, yeah.

Ian: I think one other thing too is, um, it, I, I don't know if this is a helpful framework to think of it, but there are, there are to my mind, three different categories that communities or individuals can fall into. Right? And we know what neurodiversity affirming ought to look like. I think we do. Um, and we know what.

Being totally unaware of Neurodivergence and neurodiversity looks like in a community, but most people are somewhere in between, right? They're, they're, they have some sort of awareness of neurodiversity and the best possible intentions, but that doesn't make you affirming, right? What makes you affirming is.

Really genuinely supporting the individuals that are there in the ways that they need to be supported and not in the ways that you think they need to be supported. Um, so it's not as simple being neurodiversity affirming might start with having fidget toys available for kids or something like that, right?

Like, that's not a bad starting point. But that doesn't, that's, that isn't affirming, right? What's affirming is figuring out what this. Individual who's autistic or neurodivergent needs in order to thrive in this community and in their life, in the faith. And that's a much more complicated question. And, and that's why it's, it's so hard for us to ask because we want a simple answer.

Um, but there are no simple answers. 'cause people are individuals and there isn't a simple answer for neurotypicals either. Um, we're just better at providing neurotypical ways to plug in and and nurturing neurotypical spirituality. Right.

Krysia: Kind of building on that, I almost see this a bit like organizational change.

And there's an organizational culture within each church we know might not like those terms 'cause they could be seen to be quite secular. But there is a culture within each group of gathering Christians within a church. And culture in that way is quite. Is a long term shift rather than an overnight change.

So to almost build on what Ian was saying is almost about how do we make longer term. Changes that include how we think about what we do, how we do what we do, and how we underpin what we do. So it's not just kind of going in with, oh, here's a box of fidget toys. I say, this is, I'm holding a fidget toy myself.

Here's a box of fidget toys. Yep, we are now fine. But actually lot of the time, this still attitudinal barriers in place. Some of the time there's still not everybody quite on board, and that is a really hard thing to do and that takes a lot of time. Sometimes there's a lack of funding or time to do things and have conversations or bringing experts by experience.

And that's another thing I feel very passionate about is actually that it should be neurodivergent people doing the. Leading the educating on this so that we don't end up with neurodiversity light. Things that are not truly transformative of everyone being in God's image. It is truly kind of led by us as experts, as ex by experience and.

Also that sometimes there are just practical things in the way. 'cause there are other things going on in either our lives in the world, there are other pressures going on. So therefore things can chop and change and slide, but it's still gonna be really important to everybody if that makes sense. So I guess that's why I see it as very long term organizational culture, almost kind of the way we do things change.

Zoe: Yeah, absolutely. And I think just while you're both speaking, I think we've reflected on this like before in the podcast, but just that idea of, um, change and inclusion and supporting neurodivergent people. It's not a tick box for church leaders to go like this, this, this, this. We've reflect on that a lot.

Um, and I think like with this mental health series as well, we're not offering a, like, here's a, um, this is exactly what mental health challenges look like for every single neurodivergent person. Um, that's not what we're doing and that's not helpful. We're opening up conversations. Um. Yeah, I think that's a really important thing to think about as well.

And also I hope through like opening up conversations through the different people we speak to, whether that's about anxiety, masking identity, whatever else. Um, but yeah, you kinda start to reflect and like ask those questions and um, I. See more of the picture and see more of what, like those kind of changes need to be that aren't just small steps, which small steps are great, but are those sort of like, yes, I'm gonna transform this community and, um, yeah, think through how to do that.

Um, but yeah, we're really excited for this. I hope. Um, this has been like a little introduction to our thoughts and please get in touch if you have any questions or any reflections on this series or on mental health and neurodiversity more broadly. Um. And what I love when people comment on our episodes with their own thoughts, like when people comment on the Facebook post or whatever and with their own thoughts on the episodes, I find that so valuable and I learn a lot.

Um, but yeah. Just to close the episode, we also wanted to give a bit of space to highlight some mental health resources that you can go to if mental health is something that you're really struggling with as a neuro divergent person. Or um, just if as you're listening to this series you feel you need a little bit of support, 'cause sometimes it can be heavy talking about neurodiversity and mental health.

Um, so yeah, Krysia is going to read a list of a few resources and you can also find those resources in the show notes as well as a couple of others. Um, so yeah, Krysia will read a we list and Ian, I'll have a few US suggestions as well.

Krysia: So, um. If you are UK based, we can, um, recommend a few people who might be good at reaching out to.

We've got some text-based suggestions and some phone call based suggestions and just general information suggestions. Um, so shout. Can do, um, text-based conversations if you're in crisis. And that's text. Shout to 8 5 2 8 5 . Um, there's Campaign against Living Miserably. They have quite a lot of information online, not necessarily neurodivergent focused, but some will be really applicable for neurodivergent people.

And their website is www.calmzone.net. There's also, um. call well, and that's people specifically based in Wales, and their website is www.call helpline.org.uk.

Ian: I just, I, I only have a couple of resources, um, that I'll direct to neurodivergent individuals in particular. One is, um, there is a national, this is not as well known as it ought to be. There's a national suicide and crisis helpline in the us, which is, um, just 9, 8, 8. You can dial 9, 8 8, and, and there are people there 24 7 to help you, um, if you are in crisis.

Um, that should you, you should just keep that in mind because the world is always better with you in it. Uh, and then the second one is, uh, there's an organization called Prosper Health that is, uh, telehealth that accepts most major, uh. US-based insurance companies that provides explicitly neurodiversity affirming mental health support.

Um, so they have therapists and counselors. Uh, they also do evaluations if you are, are interested in exploring whether you might be autistic. Um, they might do ADHD as well. I don't know that for sure. Um. The last thing I'll say about that, that's the only one that I know of that's explicitly neurodiversity affirming.

There may be others locally that you can find, but the most frustrating thing that I will say as a neurodiversity, as a, as a neurodivergent person who has sought out therapy myself, is that the most frustrating thing about it is. What matters is the relationship that you have with your therapist or counselor, and that is really, really difficult.

Um, because it might mean that you take the time to go through. I. Even a few different appointments and realize this is not the person that I connect with that I can really trust to, to open up fully. And especially as a neurodivergent person, that means you have put a lot of effort into a relationship that you're then terminating.

And that can be frustrating. But just know that there are people out there who, um, who take an approach that that values you as an individual. And it's just a matter of finding that right person. Um, and Prosper is one place that I know. You might have some success with.

Zoe: Thank you both so much.

I'll put a list of that in the show notes as well as a couple of others if we think about them, um, after we've recorded this. Um, but yeah, as I said, if you have any questions, if you have anything to share or just wanna say hi, you can message us at Autism Theology on X Instagram and Blue Sky, or email us at [e-mail] thank you for listening to the Autism and Theology Podcast. If you have any questions for us or just want to say hi, please email us at [e-mail] or find us on Twitter at Autism Theology.