Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology (EdCMA) in partnership with Scottish Autism

This interdisciplinary seminar will build on the success of the 2018 Autism, Anthropology and Lived Experience symposium jointly hosted by the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology and Scottish Autism. The seminar will explore where autism and mental health paradigms form a continuum and where they might be bounded in diagnostic categories, support provision and contemporary discourse. The event will give voice to lived experience and take an interdisciplinary approach. We will ask what a critical engagement between anthropology and other disciplines might produce in understanding this relationship.

Autism is increasingly framed as a neurodevelopmental condition, or form of difference, rather than a mental health issue. Yet the history of autism is deeply intertwined with mental health. Autistic people frequently experience acute mental health difficulties. Social marginalization and exclusion, difficulty accessing public services, and environmental stressors are common experiences for people on the spectrum and can lead to anxiety and ill-health. Many autistic adults present to services with a mental health issue in the first instance, later obtaining an autism diagnosis.

Over the past century, autism has evolved as a diagnostic classification, continues to be defined as a psychiatric condition by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) (APA 2013), and is increasingly framed within areas of biomedicine as a neurodevelopmental condition. The changing ways in which psychiatric conditions are bounded, clinical practices and services assigned, and the potential overlaps in somatic and behavioural systems involved in the conditions produce complex entanglements of autism and mental health paradigms.

This interdisciplinary symposium aims to help us to understand this history and its legacy, and to explore how the relationship of autism and mental health difficulties is understood and experienced. This is both in theoretical terms and in the context of the provision and design of support practices today. In the seminar we will hear from autistic experts, psychology researchers, and anthropologists.

Speakers

Jon Adams: Artist, Flow Observatorium

Joseph Long: Research Manager, Scottish Autism

Roslyn Malcolm: PhD Student, Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology

Dr Mary Stewart: Reader in Psychology, Heriot Watt University

Round Table Discussants

Dr Catriona Stewart - SWAN, Scottish Autism

Sonny Hallet, AMASE

Dr Stefan Ecks – EdCMA, Social Anthropology, Edinburgh University

For further information contact the seminar convenors: Roslyn Malcolm: Roslyn.Malcolm@ed.ac.uk Joe Long: joseph.long@scottishautism.org

Lunch will be provided. We aim to make our event as accessible as possible for participants with a range of requirements. Please contact the conveners if you would like to discuss any dietary requirements or specific accommodations that might help to support your attendance. A quiet room will be available throughout the event.