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Argument, Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
Mental health professionals had a lot of unlearning to do, Dr Judy Tang said
In short
On the Melbourne day of the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium, the neuropsychologist named the diagnostic checklist as part of what she had to unlearn. A practitioner on the panel located innovation in that unlearning.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
Dr Judy Tang put the problem in one sentence on the Melbourne day of the 2024 Autistic Pride Day Symposium. “as mental health professionals I actually think we have a lot of unlearning to do around autism”, the neuropsychologist told the opening panel on 8 June 2024. Much of the rest of the conversation was an account of what that unlearning involved, and of where practitioners found it hard.
The panel brought back two practitioners who had spoken at the first symposium a year earlier, Tang and Dr Naomi Malone, a counselling psychologist. Kyriakos Gold, who hosted the session, began by asking Malone what had changed for them as a practitioner since then.
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Sources the story draws on
- National Guideline for the Assessment and Diagnosis of Autism: Introduction (opens in a new tab), Autism CRC
- Choose your own adventure: Pathways to adulthood autism diagnosis in Australia (opens in a new tab), Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, vol. 52(7), pp. 2984 to 2996 (Yunhe Huang, Samuel R. C. Arnold, Kitty-Rose Foley and Julian N. Trollor); Monash University research portal record
- Release of the National Autism Strategy 2025-31 (opens in a new tab), Department of Social Services (Australian Government)
- What you need to know about the government's first National Autism Strategy (opens in a new tab), Australian Psychological Society (Insights)
More from Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
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