Neurodiversity, Quality of Life, and Autistic Adults: Shifting Research and Professional Focuses onto Real-Life Challenges

By S. Robertson. 2009

300 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article examines challenges to the quality of life experienced by autistic adults. The author, who is an autistic researcher, first shares how a neurodiversity perspective offers an important alternative to the deficit model of autism. Whereas the deficit model portrays autistic people as ill, broken, and in need of fixing, the neurodiversity perspective portrays it as a form of human diversity with associated strengths and difficulties. The article’s discussion then shifts to presenting Schalock’s (2000) quality of life framework as a neurodiversity-compatible lens through which domains of quality of life can be viewed. The article analyzes in detail these core domains in relation to the lives of autistic adults. The author suggests that a collaborative approach between professionals/researchers and autistic adults is needed to develop meaningful solutions to these challenges, and he presents possibilities for collaboration. Keywords Autism, Neurodiversity, Quality of life, Autistic Adults

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a498dac3ff4eed136ad386bdf3ec62224c3cb2b9

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In Clinical Psychology

In Cognitive Neuroscience

Elizabeth Pellicano

Citations in the corpus

Which terms should be used to describe autism? Perspectives from the UK autism community (2016, background): “These views can be consistent with the notion of ‘neurodiversity’ (Singer, 1999), in which autism is considered one (neurological) form within a diversity of human minds (Nicolaidis, 2012; Robertson, 2010).”
Improving research about us, with us: a draft framework for inclusive autism research (2017, background): “…over aspects of autism, to research led by non-autistic scholars, and to the development of our understanding of autism (Arnold 2010; Chown 2013, 2014; Graby 2012; Milton 2012, 2014; Milton and Bracher 2013; Mottron et al. 2006; Murray, Lesser, and Lawson 2005; Robertson 2009; Yergeau 2010).”