Yesterday’s Autistic Mental Health Conference was more than a series of talks. It was an unfolding conversation, a weaving together of lives, theories, and solidarity among those who both presented at and attended the conference. When we step back and read the transcript of the online chat, a picture emerges of what happens when Autistic people come together to create our own spaces of belonging, knowledge, and resistance. Community as Connection and CareThe most striking theme was the constant pulse of community affirmation. Messages were punctuated with small digital gestures that said, “I see you, I hear you, you’re not alone.” Participants met each other’s stories of harm with compassion and validation, creating an atmosphere where vulnerability was not met with silence, but with solidarity. This is more than friendliness; it is survival. In a world where our suffering is so often dismissed, the ability to share and be believed is a radical act. The chat became a space where neurokin supported one another, one that held the heaviness of psychiatric trauma, misdiagnosis, and systemic violence, while also celebrating moments of joy, humour, and shared understanding. Naming Harm, Demanding ChangeAnother key theme was the surfacing of ableism and harm in systems. Many participants shared harrowing experiences of CAMHS failures, medical gaslighting, parent-blaming, and misdiagnoses such as EUPD/BPD given to Autistic young women. Others described being overmedicated, denied services, or told their autism was “cured.” These testimonies are not isolated. They illustrate systemic problems where psychiatry and education continue to enact epistemic injustice; denying the validity of Autistic knowledge and experience. In the chat, these stories were not silenced or pathologised. They were witnessed, affirmed, and situated in a broader critique of oppressive systems. Intersectionality at the ForefrontThe chat also held rich conversations about intersectionality and marginalisation. There were discussions of trans and gender diverse Autistic experiences particularly around the work of Katie Munday, as well as negativity within supposedly affirming spaces. Attendees also highlighted the compounded struggles faced by global majority Autistic people, and how violence and oppression manifest across personal and institutional contexts. By foregrounding intersectionality, the conference modelled what Autistic-led spaces must do: centre the most marginalised voices in our communities. The Joy of Autistic TheoryThe chat showed a hunger for theorising Autistic experience in our own terms. Concepts like monotropism, meerkat mode, lilipadding, neuroqueering, and the double empathy problem circulated with excitement. These weren’t abstract academic ideas. Participants actively applied them to their own lives, to their children’s education, and to their advocacy work. This is what epistemic justice looks like; Autistic-created concepts becoming tools for reframing suffering and reclaiming dignity. They move us away from deficit models and towards frameworks that honour our ways of being. Knowledge as a Collective ProjectAnother striking theme was the sheer volume of knowledge exchange and resource sharing. Participants swapped book recommendations, journal articles, advocacy guides, and contacts for research opportunities. Links to organisations, practitioner directories, and lived experience blogs flowed through the chat. This wasn’t a one way transfer of “expert” information. It was a rhizomatic exchange of knowledge, every participant contributing something valuable, and everyone benefiting. This is the antidote to the epistemic injustice Autistic people face in mainstream systems. Rather than being silenced or spoken over, Autistic people became both teachers and learners, co-creating a living archive of wisdom. Survival, Resistance, and AdvocacyThe chat also carried the weight of survival. People spoke of trauma; from cult abuse to exclusion from services to inappropriate pathways in substance use treatment. Yet these stories were consistently reframed as acts of resistance. Participants asserted the importance of agency, dignity, consent, and autonomy. Phrases like “Don’t be a dick” became shorthand for a moral framework of care. Calls for protest, petitions, and collective action showed how advocacy and solidarity flow directly from shared lived experience. Undoing Epistemic InjusticeTaken together, these themes show us what the Autistic Mental Health Conference achieved:
What this teaches us is clear; Autistic people must not only be included in conversations about mental health, we must lead them. Conferences like this are not just events, they are acts of resistance against lifetimes of marginalisation. They show that when we build our own platforms, we undo injustice, replacing it with communities of care, knowledge, and action. Final ThoughtThe transcript of the chat is evidence of something profound, that when Autistic people gather, we create worlds. Worlds where knowledge flows freely, where survival is honoured, where justice is imagined. These are the worlds that will shape the future of Autistic mental health; not the ones written about us, but the ones written with us and by us. You're currently a free subscriber to David Gray-Hammond. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Sunday, 17 August 2025
Reflections from the Autistic Mental Health Conference
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