糖心视频

Neurodiversity in Counselling & Psychotherapy

Our fourth collaborative workshop focussed on working within neurodiversity in counselling and psychotherapy. This was the fourth and last in a series of four workshops.

We introduced practitioners to the Strathclyde Counselling and Psychotherapy Research Clinic and shared some of our research findings around the topic of neurodiversity. We were joined by former students of the MSc in Counselling and Psychotherapy course, Hollie Bremmer and Zaid Al-Nayazi, who shared their insights from two case studies of neurodivergent clients working with neurotypical therapists. We also heard about Dr Anna Robinson’s ongoing research on autistic adult experiences of help seeking.

There was also space for various group discussions and practitioners sharing their experiences of working with neurodivergent clients. 

Together, we came up with some basic 'principles for practice' around working within neurodiversity. You can find a list of the principles we came up with below.
 
We invited all our workshop attendees to take part in a follow-up study which is still on-going. The intent is to measure the impact the workshops have had on attendees’ practice and what they have taken away from them. Participation in the follow-up research is entirely voluntary. Read more about the research aspect of the project. 

Principles for Good Practice: Neurodiversity

  • Collaboration – collaboratively create an effective environment which meets the client's individual needs without assuming preferences for sensory, processing, physical expression, or language.
  • Transparency – encourage the client to be clear about their needs. It's ok to do things differently.
  • Awareness – build awareness and congruence around own biases, limitations, assumptions, neurotype, and potential over-identification. Consider the potential limitations of your 'standard' practice (e.g. use of outcome measures). Identify gaps in knowledge and seek CPD which includes lived experiences of neurodivergence.
  • Respect – strive to understand and accept of the client's uniqueness within their neurotype and respect their individual frame of reference without assumptions, corrective language, or misinterpretation.

Principles collaboratively agreed upon by participants of workshop (Neurodiversity in Counselling and Psychotherapy on 28/04/26 - this link opens a PDF document).