Runners at the gates: growing around the barriers to diagnosis in autism, ADHD and SpLDs

Disability Studies and Educational Psychology tend to construct autism, adhd and dyslexia as specific, universal neurodevelopmental disorders. A person is thus autistic, or not; dyslexic, or not; has adhd, or not, in line with the binary logic which also produces modern concepts of neurodivergence and neurotypicality. However, some do not fall neatly either side of the diagnostic line, but land half-in, half out, giving the line an ontological wobble. This paper explores the experiences of adults who consider themselves autistic, dyslexic, or to have adhd, despite being told that they fall short of a diagnostic threshold, or that assessment is inappropriate or unavailable. It adds to the gathering momentum in Critical Disability Studies which questions the givens of psychopathology and centres ‘becoming’ rather than static, ‘neuro-identity’ as core in understanding human experience. The becoming of those living in diagnostic borderlands can be welcomingly disruptive of those arborescent façades constructed in Western edu-psy-disciplines, and increasingly transported around the globe.