Does it seem as though more people are coming out as neurodivergent these days?
Perhaps you’ve heard complaints that social media – particularly TikTok – is driving a trend. Or maybe you’ve encountered the suggestion that neurodivergence has somehow become fashionable, a label people adopt for attention, status or belonging.
For neurodivergent people, these claims can be deeply dismissive. They reduce complex experiences and real struggles to a passing cultural craze.
My research suggests something quite different. Far from being a modern phenomenon, neurodivergence has a long history. In other words, people whose ways of thinking, sensing or behaving differed from social expectations have always existed. Members of my research project have described discovering these historical figures as like finding neurodivergent ancestors.
Of course, this is not about diagnosing people who lived centuries ago with autism, ADHD or other conditions. Diagnostic categories have their own history. They change over time, and can be shaped by specific cultural and geographical contexts. Moreover, I am not a doctor nor a psychologist, and I am not interested in retrospectively diagnosing historical people.
What interests me is something broader: the many people in the past who were understood – by others or by themselves – as different.
One example is Hannah Allen. She was an English widow who published an account of her experiences in 1683. She wrote about periods of profound melancholy and hearing voices, drawing on journal entries she kept during those difficult years. Stories like Allen’s remind us that people have long searched for language to describe minds and experiences that did not fit comfortably within accepted norms.
People have always adapted and reshaped the language available to them. Today, clinical terms regularly spill into everyday conversation. People talk about being “anxious” about an exam or “depressed” by bad weather, without necessarily claiming a diagnosis. Literature has always transformed and enriched our understanding of medical and psychological concepts.
In my work, I define neurodivergence as ways of thinking, sensing or behaving that diverge from social expectations. What’s also important is that those expectations vary across time and place. Behaviour regarded as unusual in one context may be entirely acceptable in another.
C. Duflos le père/Wellcome Collection
Take repetitive movement, for example. Today, many neurodivergent people describe using “stims” or fidgeting to regulate attention, emotions or sensory experiences. In early modern Catholic worship, rosary beads could serve a similar function. Repetitive hand movements were not only accepted, but encouraged as part of religious practice. But context also matters.
In the 18th century, the Scottish laird Hugh Blair was criticised for struggling to sit still during family prayers. Instead, he occupied himself by knitting a sock. The habit was considered so strange that it was cited in a court case as evidence that he lacked the rational capacity to marry.
Examples like this show how ideas about acceptable behaviour are socially constructed. They also reveal how people whose behaviour diverged from expectations could face suspicion, exclusion or stigma. A broad definition of neurodivergence allows us to explore a wide range of historical experiences that do not fit neatly into modern diagnostic categories.
It opens up questions about phenomena such as religious melancholy, compulsive behaviours or unusual sensory experiences without forcing them into contemporary medical frameworks.
It also encourages us to think differently about the present. If neurodivergence is understood as a spectrum of human difference rather than a fixed set of diagnoses, it may help reduce stigma around experiences that are often heavily moralised, including addiction.
Reading for resonance
Neurodivergent readers often have a kind of instinct for recognising experiences that feel familiar in historical texts. This does not mean that people in the past were exactly like us. Nor does it mean we can know precisely what they thought or felt. Instead, it means acknowledging moments of connection.
Take Morose, the central character in Ben Jonson’s play Epicœne. Morose is intensely sensitive to noise. He seals up his house, insists that servants wear soft-soled shoes and relies on a kind of silent communication.
For many autistic readers, particularly those with sensory sensitivities, aspects of this portrayal may feel strikingly familiar, and that familiarity matters.
Read more:
Is Hercule Poirot autistic? Here are seven clues that he might be
Too often, expertise about neurodivergence is assumed to reside exclusively with doctors and researchers. Reading for resonance recognises that experience is also a form of knowledge. Neurodivergent people can bring valuable perspectives to historical interpretation precisely because of how they experience the world.
This matters at a time when public conversations about neurodivergence are becoming louder and more polarised.
At the 2026 Wales Neurodiversity Show, our research team asked visitors a question: who knows more about neurodivergence – people today, or people living between 1550 and 1750? Only one person out of 15 chose the early modern period.
Our poll was just for fun, of course. But it reflects a common assumption that neurodivergence is something modern people have discovered and understood. This is something that I hope my research might change.
Certainly, we now have concepts such as neurodiversity, along with a rich vocabulary developed within neurodivergent communities themselves. Terms like “AuDHD” (autistic and ADHD) and “neurospicy” (neurodivergent) would have been absent centuries ago.
But new language does not necessarily mean entirely new experiences. For neurodivergent people who feel isolated or historically invisible, discovering a longer history can be profoundly validating. It reminds us that difference has always been part of human society.
Our neurodivergent ancestors may sometimes feel surprisingly familiar. At other times, they may seem so distant that we can never fully understand them. Both aspects are important.
The next time someone dismisses neurodivergence as a fad or a trend, it may be worth remembering that people have been debating, describing and living neurodivergent lives for centuries. So, if it is a trend, it is one that has lasted an extraordinarily long time.
