In limbo

Stuck in endless hesitation,
Mind and body trapped in ambivalence's sensation.

Can't move forward, can't step back,
Caught in a loop of indecision, what do I lack?

OCD

My mind is spinning round and round
Compelled to do what can't be found
Repetitive acts, a daily grind
OCD consumes, hard to unwind.

Powerful urge, the need is great
To ease the mind, to alleviate
Thoughts plague, won't go away
OCD controls, no matter what I say

Constant struggle, day by day
To keep those obsessive compulsive behaviors at bay

Can’t give in
….Must break the spin

Embracing HOPE

as a new day begins. 

Monday Blues

It's only Monday morn, already feel worn out.
Week ahead seems like an endless bout

A Highly Sensitive Person

A Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) 

"Sensitivity is a heightened 'ability to .... to one’s environment'"

"I often complain about sounds, smells, or tastes that don’t seem to bother those around me..

Does that sound like Deja vu for the sensory overstimulated autistic?  

Read more in this Greater Good Science Center article.

Constant Overload

Being bombarded by the sensory system

A constant overload, it never ends
Sensory overwhelmed, a feeling of prison
Trapped in my own mind, with no friends.

Poor somatosensory body mapping
A constant confusion, a foggy haze
I struggle to understand my own body
A feeling of being lost, in a daze

Words get stuck, inside my head
Apraxic, struggles to speak
A feeling of frustration, so very unique
As talking eludes me, instead

It can be a struggle, to navigate
This world that's full of sensation

I need to find a way
… with determination

A bundle of irrational worry

I am a bundle of irrational worry
Each day i wake up with dread and hurry
Fears and doubts consume, a constant flurry
Hope still flickers in internal jury

Loneliness

The room is empty

Loneliness creeps in slowly
Empty walls surround

Silence echoes all around

One big vagary

Vagaries ubiquitous in autism.
Nothing standard, fractured light in a prism.
Can we conclude then, so far…..
… no evidence in any evidence really
….no clues. What’s going on in this gallery.
inexplicable me. I continue to be one big vagary.

Disheartened

I feel disheartened today
Can the sun's rays chase the gray?
Grad School challenges run deep.
Disability already a minefield

How do I handle this?

Comorbidity of ADHD puts you at higher risk for Mental Health

This article on ADHD talks about research from Bath University in the UK. 

Essentially it says

• Mental health risk higher in ADHD alone > Mental Health risk in Autism alone
• The risk is higher when there are co-morbidities (ie: Autism+ADHD)

Research confirms what many us have already felt and known about comorbidity of Autism+ADHD. The net effect is not a simple sum, but exponential. 

What makes me sad is for the most part stimulant meds seem to work ADHD like they are supposed to. But when it comes to autism+ADHD, the same meds are still a wild guess and most don't work in autism like they do in the non-autism population with paradoxical effects.

Melancholy

Melancholy creeps upon my heart

A feeling, deep and dark, it starts

A longing for something lost

A sorrow that comes at any cost.

A tempest tossed

 

A tempest tossed

In a world of noise and chaos,

My mind is a storm, a tempest tossed.

The overwhelming sensation,

Meltdown, a state of frustration.

My senses heightened,

Sounds and lights, so brightened.

A cacophony of noise,

A confusion that destroys.

A feeling of impending doom.

As I try to find an escape room.

But there is no escape,

From this overwhelming state.

I am trapped in my mind,

A prisoner of my own fate.

Is there a glimmer of hope,

A lifeline to help me cope.

To regain control, and continue on

But in the middle of the meltdown, all that is long gone. 

Trapped in Turmoil

Trapped in Turmoil: SIB and Meltdown

In turmoil deep, the mind doth rage,

A tempest wild, within the cage.

A meltdown fierce, the self doth harm,

A trauma deep, the soul doth alarm.

With autism's veil, the mind doth cope,

But oft it strains, and seeks to elope.

In self-injury, it finds release,

But in the wake, a heart doth cease.

Oh autism, thy ways are hard,

For those who bear thy hidden card.

Urgent call for solutions anon,

And hold us close, with open mind.

#autismsolutions

-------------------------------------

A poem on self-injurious behavior which is a reality for many autistics and is terribly traumatizing and battering for both the autistics and others around. We need solutions urgently. 

See this earlier post on SIB & Suicide Ideation in Autistics.

--------------

Loneliness

Factoring in disability, tends to, I think, further intensift that loneliness because as a disabled person you already were existing on the fringe socially to begin with. 

Good insight from Nikka 

Image Description: Blue background with text that reads: So many [grad students] feel lonely at different times and in different ways. You’re making such a big leap from undergrad where everyone is basically in rhythm with one another, to graduate school where everyone is out of sync and working solo. It's a Lot!

Responses

Leading me to think anew about how to foster collaboration in graduate school. Everything after higher education requires teamwork, why don't we teach and learn with greater intention this way?

This is so true. I saw my cohort in person for orientation and then I pretty much never saw them again. This was largely because I was living and working in another city and attending classes virtually. There just wasn't the same sense of shared space & time that college provided

The Root of Peace of Mind is Compassion

 

Doomscrolling

Came across a new term, rather a term that's been around for a while.

Doomscrolling is the act of compulsively scrolling through negative news or social media feeds, often for hours at a time, despite feeling upset or stressed by the content. The term "doomscrolling" gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people spent more time online and were inundated with a constant stream of alarming news about the virus and its effects. This behavior can lead to feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, and helplessness, as well as difficulty sleeping and concentrating

 So it became this "vicious cycle  in which users find themselves get stuck in a pattern of seeking negative information no matter how bad the news is." 

It does not help that, online/social media algorithms are designed to feed us "attention-capturing" information and give us more of whatever we had clicked on. The result was a newsfeed of endless doom, which could trigger more compulsive scrolling behavior. 

The disabled/autistic are equally vulnerable to these influences, further compounding our mental health issues. 

Here is a research paper on this. 

Doomscrolling Scale: its Association with Personality Traits, Psychological Distress, Social Media Use, and Wellbeing
Satici SA, Gocet Tekin E, Deniz ME, Satici B. Doomscrolling Scale: its Association with Personality Traits, Psychological Distress, Social Media Use, and Wellbeing. Appl Res Qual Life. 2022 Oct 19:1-15. doi: 10.1007/s11482-022-10110-7. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36275044; PMCID: PMC9580444.

SIB and Suicide Ideation

• 30% of autistics have Self-Injurious Behaviors (Soke et al., 2016)

SIB in autism could in fact be a manifestation of psychological trauma and indicative of underlying suicide ideation or maybe a substitute for suicide itself. 

I had an autistic friend who attempted suicide first by swallowing the contents of an entire bottle of melatonin pills and then a second time by drinking a whole bottle of his dad's whiskey in his home. He had to have his stomach pumped in ER both times. All while he was a teen. 

Ironically, the very act of suicide as such, requires a lot of motor skills, executive functioning and motor planning. So maybe SIB's are the only tools available for some autistics as an outlet for built up trauma, stress or distress from other underlying issues. Perhaps it's not thought of as suicide ideation when the autistic does not have spoken language to express it as such, but don't actions speak louder than words. Where SIB's become a substitute or prologue to suicide ideation. 

Isn't this worth finding REAL solutions to, through autism research.

Currently there is little to no support for autistics engaging in SIB or families who are trying to support those autistics. 

Medication is currently seen as the only resort. And what are these drugs. All we have is Big Pharma recycling/ rebranding meds made in the 1950s. Minor changes in chemical drug structure allows for re-patenting and maintaining the exorbitant high prices/profits. I once heard Dr Antonio Hardan of Stanford mention that these drugs don't work the same way in autistics as in the general population - why then are we being over medicated from childhood with drugs that don't work for us. 

There is a paucity of crisis centers resources or supports available to autistics with SIB's/aggression and their families. Most families don't know who to approach; it's like they are on an island. The autistic's life often becomes a revolving door of stays in hospital psychiatric wards (like a few of my friends) and then sent promptly back to their families after their stay. Why revolving? - because they are on meds which have limited effectiveness in the first place. And many get sent off to live in group homes or residential facilities as the family can no longer cope living from crisis to crisis (irony is that many group homes don't want autistics with behaviors) . If this is the state of the family, imagine the state of the autistic themselves who often have much more limited communication - nothing to do with speaking ability here, think - how communicative is any person, disabled or not, in times of distress (like you choke up when crying!!). 

The limited number of meds available to us means along with being on meds, often since childhood, means many of us build tolerance to many of these drugs which further decrease their effectiveness. So even the ones that "kinda" worked don't work anymore. We are all going to live to 80 at least. What are we gonna do when we are in our 30s, 40s, 60s, 70s, 80s if nothing works. 

We need research done to develop therapeutics that will actually work for us? And given autism is a spectrum, we need to get down to a physiological level so that precision therapeutics are developed so we can reduce side effects. 

At the end of the day we also need to remember that psychotropic drugs only help to manage symptoms or dampen behavioral symptoms. So what is also needed is biomedical research into underlying issues at a physiological level that translate into affordable mainstream healthcare - its that research into gut issues, sleep issues, auto-immune issues, neuro-inflammation, movement issues etc - these are real issues that many autistics are facing - cuz if we get to the bottom of those, maybe we can reduce SIB by that much. 

Insights on the Complexity of Mental Health & Disability

I was a speaker on this panel by UC Davis Mind Institute on mental health on Aug 6

Recording at https://youtu.be/KEjBtzQvSug

Stress and Sleep - Project

My semester long project for Psych 102 - done entirely in R. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10gyJE_BRbPnxoryNV0D2Fv0TNSS7Z8In/view?usp=sharing

Abstract:

Existing research has demonstrated a strong correlation between stress levels and sleep quality. The current study further investigated this negative correlation between sleep and stress and in addition, examined the interaction of stress caused by the current coronavirus pandemic on sleep. As expected, the first hypothesis was met, in that stress negatively predicts sleep. The data in the study showed a strong, statistically significant relationship between stress and sleep, along with strong statistical power. The second hypothesis attempted to look at the interaction role of the COVID-19 pandemic, whereby the relationship between stress and sleep was stronger (a steeper negative slope) for participants who report that a greater degree of their stress was related to the pandemic. The data collected in the study seemed to suggest that there was a reverse main effect of the pandemic; that is to say, sleep increased as a result of the pandemic, but this was not statistically signficant. In addition, the actual interaction of the pandemic stress on sleep in the current study was also not statistically significant. Recent studies such as that by Katuna and Lau (2020), have however suggested that the relaxed schedule of the pandemic lockdown have allowed for longer sleep times though there were limits to actual sleep quality due to a lack of sleep buildup from decreased physical activity.

# Introduction

Research on stress and its impact on sleep has been ongoing for a while now and the strong negative relationship between them is well established. For instance, it has been found that insomniacs had overactive cortisol levels, which is a measure of hormonal stress; cortisol levels were especially elevated at the time of sleep onset (Vgontzas et al., 2001). To underscore the importance of sleep, lack of REM sleep which helps delete the emotional component of memory is thought to contribute to PTSD (van der Helm et al., 2011). REM sleep also serves a number of functions such as housecleaning extraneous memories accumulated during the day (Crick & Mitchenson, 1983). Given the crucial role of sleep for both forgetting and learning (Walker, 2009), the role of stress as a predictor is an important factor. The current study attempted to further confirm this negative correlation between sleep and stress.


In addition, this study also investigated the impact of stress caused by the current COVID-19 pandemic on sleep. Existing research, though recent due to the newness of the pandemic itself, is steadily growing. Unlike natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes, which tend to be localized events, the pandemic has been an unprecedented prolonged and ongoing stress event at a global level with the associated stresses over finances, employment, income, food insecurity, access to medical care, social isolation, as well as challenges of juggling family and work obligations (Morin & Carrier, 2020). Such intense and prolonged stress is bound to have an impact on sleep, especially, “at a time when healthy sleep is particularly important to cope adaptively with this crisis and uncertainty about the future” (Morrin & Carrier, 2020).

A September 2020 study by Katuna and Lau looked at the impact of COVID-19 from a sleep health perspective. They point to data such as that from the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City, which showed a 60% increase in calls relating to stress since the pandemic related lockdown was initiated.


At the same time, Katuna and Lau (2020) point to the more relaxed schedule of the lockdown which actually allows for, “longer sleep opportunities and total sleep time.” While it may not make much of an impact on those who enjoyed good sleep earlier, it may benefit those who had been sleep deprived due to the nature of their occupation and time spent in commuting. They do highlight however that there is less actual sleep pressure built up during the day due to the lack of physical activity which can limit improvements to actual sleep quality.

This study thus investigated both the main effect of stress on sleep as well as the interaction effect of stress induced by the pandemic on sleep.

Hypothesis 1: I hypothesize that people sleep less and stress predicts that.

Hypothesis 2: I hypothesize that there is an interaction, whereby the relationship between stress and sleep is stronger (a steeper negative slope), for participants who report that a greater degree of their stress is related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

# Methods

## Participants

Data was downloaded from Qualtrics survey software in the form of a .csv file and read into R to collect information on participants.

`r nrow(responsedata)` participants were recruited through Academic Prolific. Participants were limited to those living in the United States, age range from `r min(responsedata$agr)` to `r max(responsedata$agr)`, with a mean age of `r mean(responsedata$agr)` years, and standard deviation of `r sd(responsedata$agr)`. `r sum(responsedata$gdr == 1)` were female, `r sum(responsedata$gdr == 2)` were male and `r sum(responsedata$gdr == 3)` identified as non-binary or other.

## Material

Data was collected via a Qualtrics survey. The survey was intentionally kept very simple and short to encourage maximum participation.

Two existing scales were used. The first was the single item Sleep Quality Index (Snyder et al., 2018). The SQI is a 11-point likert scale and scores 0 as terrible sleep, 1-3 as poor sleep, 4-6 as fair sleep, 7-9 as good sleep and 10 as excellent sleep. In filling out the SQI, participants were asked to consider other components of sleep such as the hours of sleep, frequency of nighttime waking, ease of falling asleep, how refreshing their sleep was and, "how often they woke up earlier than they had to in the morning" (Synder et al., 2018).

Despite being a single item measure, the SQI has been found to show both validity and reliability, relative to the longer sleep questionnaires used in depression and insomnia patients (Synder et al., 2018).

The other established scale that was used was the four item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-4) which asks for thoughts and feelings over the last month (Cohen et al., 1983). The PSS-4 uses a five-point likert scale with zero being never and four being most often. Individual line items ask, “In the last month, how often have you felt, #1 that you were unable to control the important things in your life, #2 confident about your ability to handle your personal problems, #3 that things were going your way, and #4 difficulties were piling up so high you could not overcome them" (Cohen et al., 1983). As per the scale requirements, items two and three were reverse coded, and individual scores were added up for a single score; the highest possible score of 16 indicating the maximum stress.

The PSS-4 is a well established scale that has been around for a few decades. Initially developed as a 14 item scale (PSS-14), shorter subsequent versions (PSS-10 and PSS-4) were later introduced.

An additional single item measure, "pandemic stress score;" was added to the survey in the form of a five-point likert question; namely - "How much of your stress is related to the pandemic?." The scoring was zero for "none of my stress," to four being, "all of my stress." This measure was used for lack of an existing measure as the pandemic itself is a recent global phenomena. As a result, this measure has not passed any test of validity or reliability.

The resultant survey contained a total of 8 questions, including two questions on demographics of age and gender (male, female, other).

## Procedure

This was an observational study with all data for the study collected over a twenty four hour period through Prolific Academic and with the use of the Qualtrics survey describe above.

The dependent variable in this study was sleep quality which was measured by the single item SQI.

The independent variable in this study was stress, which was measured in two ways. One was via the four item PSS-4. The second was the single item "Pandemic Stress Score," created for this survey as described above.

# Data Cleaning

Some data cleaning was required. The Qualtrics survey software automatically scores data using a 1-5 score, with 1 being the lowest score and 5 being the highest. However, the two established scales used in this study, the SQI and PSS-4, use a 0-4 score, with zero being the lowest score and four the highest. Data for all three variables was therefore adjusted by one to bring them all to a 0-4 scale. A total for the PSS-4 scale was generated after reverse-coding items two and three as per the scale instructions.

# Descriptives

## Means and Standard Deviations

Descriptive statistics for the variables are summarized and reported in the table below.

## Tests for Normality

The Shapiro-Wilk test was run on all variables to check for normality and ggplot was used to create histograms to visually check for skewness. The R output for the Shapiro-Wilk is given below.

## Test for Scale Reliability

Cronbach's Alpha was calculated for the PSS-4 scale and the R-output displayed below. Cronbach's Alpha was not calculated for the other two measures, SQI and Pandemic Stress Score, as both are single item measures.

# Data analysis Plan

R [@R-base] and Papaja [@R-papaja] were used for all the analyses.

To test the first hypothesis, a multiple regression type of analysis was run, which would indicate if stress (as measured by PSS-4) predicts sleep (SQI score).


To test the second hypothesis, a regression interaction model was run, to see if the relationship between sleep (SQI score) and stress (PSS-4) was especially strong if people reported that their stress is mainly related to COVID-19 (Pandemic Stress Score).

A power analysis was also run to check for effect size and power for this study.

## Libraries

The following libraries were used for the analyses:

## Analysis 1: Multiple Regression Interaction

The R-output of the multiple regression interaction analysis is displayed below.

## Analysis 2: Power Analysis and Effect Size

The R-output for the Power analysis is displayed below.

# Data Visualization

## Plot 1: Normalcy and Skewness of the Data Variables.

Data for all three variables was also visualized in the form of histograms below.

## Plot 2: A look at interaction

The output of the multiple regression interaction is further represented pictorally in Plot 1 below.

# Results

The pictoral visualizations of the data (the SQI sleep score, the PSS-4 score, and Pandemic Stress Score) in the form of the histograms in Plot 1 appeared to approximate normal distributions visually. The Shapiro-Wilk test had however indicated that all three variables differ from the normal. Attempts to transform the data using log or squareroot seemed to only skew the data, so no transformation was done on the data as regressions can typically handle some level of assumption violations.

Cronbach's alpha for the PSS-4 scale for this study was 0.79 which meets the acceptable threshold of 0.70 for scale reliability. This measure indicates the degree to which the set of items in the scale co-vary, relative to their sum score.

The Power analysis revealed a large effect size of 0.38 (as it above the threshold of 0.3) showing a strong relationship between the variables. The study also had strong power at 0.99, indicating that if this study was run multiple times, a statistically significant difference would be obtained 99% of the time.

Descriptive Statistics were summarized in the table in the Descriptives section. Means for the three variables PSS Score, Pandemic Stress Score and SQI score were 7.73, 1.86 and 6.53 respectively and the standard deviations 3.10, 0.91 and 6.00 respectively.

Running multiple regression interaction analysis on the data indicated that if there was no stress (PSS score or Pandemic stress score), then Sleep Quality would score at 8.89 which is ranked as "good" on the SQI scale (a score of 7 to 9 indicates good sleep quality on the SQI scale). This relationship is also evident in the Plot 2 above.

The analysis also revealed a main effect of the PSS stress score on sleep quality. That is, for every one unit increase in PSS score, the sleep quality score will decrease by 0.29. The p-value for this variable shows that there is a statistically significant relationship, such that a higher PSS score predicts lower sleep quality. The second main effect of this study seems to indicate that for every one unit increase in Pandemic stress score, the sleep quality would in fact increase by 0.29; however this relationship is not statistically significant. The model fit indicates that the PSS stress and Pandemic stress together account for 27.5% of the variation in sleep. However the interaction between PSS and Pandemic scores is not statistically significant.

# Discussion

The first hypothesis was met in that stress negatively predicts sleep. The data in the study, as is evident in Plot 2 showed a strong relationship. There is strong statistical power and effect size. The relationship between stress and sleep is a well established relationship and therefore the results were not surprising.

The second hypothesis had attempted to look at the interaction role of the stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic, whereby the relationship between stress and sleep is stronger (a steeper negative slope) for participants who report that a greater degree of their stress was related to the pandemic. While the raw data seems to suggest that there was a reverse main effect of the pandemic; that is to say, sleep increased as a result of the pandemic, this relationship was not statistically significant. Recent studies such as that by Katuna and Lau (2020), have shown that the relaxed schedule of the pandemic lockdown have in fact allowed for longer sleep times though there were limits to actual sleep quality due to a lack of sleep buildup from reduced physical exercise.

The interaction of the pandemic on sleep in the current study however was not statistically significant either. This may be due to the nature of the survey question itself, which unlike the PSS and SQI, is not a scale that has statistical validity or reliability.

A future direction would be to explore this idea further with a scale that passed tests of validity and reliability and truly measures the impact of a global ongoing pandemic specific stress on sleep versus localized stress events such as an earthquake or other natural disasters.

Collaborating on Anxiety in Neurodiversity

Over the summer, I was part of a Stanford Rebuilt Project - NDGifts (Neuro diversity, Giving Individuals full team success.). It was a collaborative effort by around 72 people from across the world. It is the idea of helping employers better understand ND so that ND folks also become part of the employment landscape. I wrote the section on Anxiety as Comorbidity of the 81 page report. 

Launch Event on 9/3/20 (From 0:52 mins) - on Youtube
Link to the Report: My section starts on Page 50 

I actually heard about this project from another recent Berkeley graduate, Cole, who is also part of this project. It’s been an unusual summer sitting at home, with rampant cabin fever.

There were many areas that Tiffany laid out that we could get involved in and frankly I was feeling a little overwhelmed at the beginning. I already deal with a lot of anxiety and this summer of pandemic has not been kind to many of us autistics in some ways and it has felt very oppressive and suffocating.

So I thought, why not take on the topic of anxiety as a co-morbidity and write on it. Writing can be cathartic and therapeutic as well as informational for others, and I have written on mental health in autism before.

Other topics I was interested in writing about was how neurodiversity is defined, how it is represented in the media and the whole special education system which is a mess with gatekeeping at every level. Had lots of thoughts on many of these things. Of course it's absolutely unrealistic to take on writing so many. So I focused on the anxiety part. But was able to add inputs to other different areas in the meetings.

Tiffany was also super helpful in funneling a lot of research articles my way as I was trying to set up the remote login to the Berkeley library system to access research materials. So that was super helpful.

Sometimes the hardest part is to get started and Nicole was really great on that and she outlined a nice framework to work within. It was great working with Nicole.

So the section is a combination of literature review of existing research and incorporating personal experiences to give it a human angle, that there are real people at the end of it reflecting liv’d experiences.

I think mental health is something that people have not quite understood, a kind of fuzzy logic. Sometimes it seems like the newest buzzword, to be used almost like a fashion accessory, which saddens me as it dilutes the needs of those who really have to liv with it.

Everyone also seems to assume that Mental health is a stand alone condition. So if you have autism, it must preclude anxiety. I think what we are trying to say is that anxiety is a very real thing, a very real co-existing condition, a very real comorbidity of neurodivergence.

If you think about it, Mental health is inevitable after years of feeling different, that you don’t belong, and being excluded. The nature of the neurodiversity itself, whether it's autism or ADHD or dyslexia or dysgraphia, can itself be a source of anxiety as can environmental factors and societal attitudes. We go into explaining these in the report. It does not matter if the disability is very visible like in my case or invisible as in the case of many others, each has different anxieties around it.

I have both learned from and enjoyed writing this section as well as reviewing and providing feedback to other sections.

I think one of the surprising ironies of this pandemic, or rather its bright lights, is that zoom has been able to connect us to people from around the world. It was amazing to hear different perspectives across times zones and across continents. So we were zooming and working off the same google drive and it did not matter that we were literally crossing physical oceans.

As an autistic I have a huge personal stake in seeing improvements across the board for our community. I tentatively attended the first meeting and found an important area was being targeted, getting employers to understand what neurodiversity was about.

You see, you can implement all kinds of laws to mandate equitable access to employment, but laws will not translate to anything as long as employers feel uncertain and uncomfortable about what they are dealing with.

It's no use just telling employers that they need to be doing this for the greater good because everyone needs to be included. They will always find a workaround to not go into unknown employee territory if they don’t understand what accommodations can look like or that there can actually be advantages to them. Neurodiversity is a huge spectrum which can make it seem overwhelming but it can also be a spectrum of un thought of skill sets that can be harnessed.

I had another stake in this project in that some faces in the neurodiversity populations such as autistics with higher support needs, are less visible even to general society, and therefore less visible to employers as well. For instance, I’m not the image of what you imagine a college going autistic would look like. But why should individuals like me be a rarity in the college world and hence the employment world. I wanted to give a voice to this population as well, that we exist and have skills to contribute too. And we can create win-win situations.

It stands to reason therefore that as potential employers learn about neurodiversity, they will become more amenable to including all of neurodiversity in the employment arena. We can help employers get over this fear of the unknown and find out that perhaps we are all not so different after all. I believe this project is a step in expanding understanding and kind of demystifying neurodiversity.

Simple really, from my point of view as an autistic. All of us, whether abled or disabled want to be contributing members of society. We all need to wake up to something meaningful every day.