Let's Talk Neurosense: the psychology of neurodiversity

Rima Scheimann brings a wealth of perspectives. As the mother to a child with a PDA (pathological demand avoidance) profile who is currently not attending school, she has first hand experience of what it can be like when your child doesn’t fit the school system. She’s also an orthoptist, and has worked in neurodevelopmental services in the NHS. And finally, her family is from India while she was born in the UK and so she brings a cross-cultural perspective.
In this wide-ranging interview Rima tells us how having her son has changed the way that she works and understands children’s behaviour. She talks of their struggles to be understood and of how hard they have had to fight for recognition. She told us how she feels that her son has made her a better orthoptist, and what that looks like in practice. She talks of feeling misunderstood, and how she thinks that this could change.
We hope you enjoy it.



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If you study undergraduate psychology, you’ll learn about object permanence. It’s a developmental stage when babies first understand that objects that they cannot see still exist. It’s really early - happens before they can talk. Someone without object permanence would be severely disabled.
So when Owen Chevalier noticed that object permanence was being talked about as a symptom of ADHD, he was intrigued. How had this happened? And why had none of his professors noticed?
Owen is a philosopher of psychiatry, and so he set out to find out what was going on. In this interview, he tells us the story of how he traced object permanence back to its source and where things went from there. It’s a fascinating story.
Owen also tells us more about the things that interest philosophers of psychiatry. We talk about looping and how ideas spread on social media, and why this is far more powerful than we think.
Owen’s academic paper about object permanence-
Chevalier, O (2024) “It starts on TikTok”: Looping Effects and The Impact of Social Media on Psychiatric Terms. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology Volume 31, Number 2, June 2024 pp. 163-174



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When Katharine Beals’ autistic son was young, she realise that he wasn’t acquiring language as other children were. It wasn’t happening naturally, so she set about deliberately teaching him how to communicate, word by word. From here, she developed a interest in autistic linguistics, as she calls it.
Fast forward to the present, her son is an adult and Katharine is a specialist in autism and language acquisition. And because she understands the process of language acquisition so well, when she heard about facilitated communication she knew it could not be possible. This just wasn’t how language and communication works.
In this fascinating conversation, Katharine tells us why she thinks that the neurodiversity community has not rejected facilitated communication despite the overwhelming evidence that it does not enable independent communication and can cause harm. She tells us about helping her son learn to communicate, and why understanding the intricacies of how autism can affect language acquisition is so important.
Katharine, along with Janyce Boynton (who we interviewed in S2 E10) contributes to a website dedicated to informing people of the harms of facilitated communication, FacilitatedCommunication.org.
Katharine’s own webpage
Link to the University of Pennsylvania’s (not Penn State as Dani had intially thought) Adversarial Collaboration Project.



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Are autism and ADHD overdiagnosed? Underdiagnosed? Misdiagnosed? What’s really going on?
The UK government commissioned a report last year to address exactly those issues and it’s finally here. The Fonagy report was published on 9th Oct and spans over 600 pages.
That’s a long document, and there have already been a lot of takes on this report. Some have said that it confirms that overdiagnosis isn’t happening and that this is welcome, while others have framed it as an attack on neurodivergent people. It suggests that we should be moving to a needs-led system, plus diagnosis. What does that really mean?
We sat down with James Barnes who luckily for us has put the time into understanding this report to ask him what he thinks, and where we go from here. James wrote a thorough response to the report on his Substack The Between Us which can be read here.
James’s website is here.



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Dr Lester Liao is a Developmental Paediatrician at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and Assistant Professor at McGill University, where he is Director of the Formation of the Professional as Healer Course and Creator and Director of the Doctor as Person Fellowship. He is an Associate Member at the Institute of Health Sciences Education.
He is particularly interested in the role of philosophy and culture in shaping the practice of medicine. He has become increasingly concerned about overdiagnosis of autism, and in this interview he explains why. He tells us why he thinks so many children are being diagnosed with autism, and how a diagnosis can harm as well as help.
Lester’s paper on overdiagnosis with Eric Fombonne-
Liao L, & Fombonne E. (2026) Autism Overdiagnosis and Its Harmful Effects. JAMA Pediatr. 180(7):711–712. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2026.0400


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit neurosense.substack.com