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.

Read more: Why understanding autism means looking beyond spoken language – two autistic researchers of communication explain

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,........

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