Open Society

Microsoft’s Accessibility Innovation Strategist discusses AI’s potential for accessibility, emphasizing the need for responsible use and diverse teams to mitigate harm and promote inclu…

Mentra’s mission is to employ 100,000 talented neurodiverse individuals by 2025. Join today to close the autism employment gap as a candidate, recruiter, or vocational rehabilitation center. Founded at Georgia Tech by disability advocates, Mentra's aim is to create an accessible future for those on the autism spectrum, including Asperger's syndrome, ADHD, OCD, Dyslexia, and other learning disabilities.

Objective To assess the extent and types of financial ties to industry of panel and task force members of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , fifth edition, text revision (DSM-5-TR), published in 2022. Design Cross sectional analysis. Setting Open Payments database, USA. Participants 92 physicians based in the US who served as members of either a panel (n=86) or task force (n=6) on the DSM-5-TR with information recorded in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payments database during 2016-19. This period was chosen to include the year that development of the DSM-5-TR began and the three years preceding, a time consistent with previous research on conflicts of interest and consistent with the American Psychiatric Association’s disclosure requirements for the fifth revision (DSM-5) of the manual. Main outcome measures Type and amount of compensation the panel and task force members of DSM-5-TR received during 2016-19. Results After duplicate names had been removed, 168 individuals were identified who served as either panel or task force members of the DSM-5-TR. 92 met the inclusion criteria of being a physician who was based in the US and therefore could be included in Open Payments. Of these 92 individuals, 55 (60%) received payments from industry. Collectively, these panel members received a total of $14.2m (£11.2m; €13m). One third (33.3%) of the task force members had payments reported in Open Payments. Conclusions Conflicts of interest among panel members of DSM-5-TR were prevalent. Because of the enormous influence of diagnostic and treatment guidelines, the standards for participation on a guideline development panel should be high. A rebuttable presumption should exist for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to prohibit conflicts of interest among its panel and task force members. When no independent individuals with the requisite expertise are available, individuals with associations to industry could consult to the panels, but they should not have decision making authority on revisions or the inclusion of new disorders. The raw data used in this study is publicly available at https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov.

Why Weird Pride? School can be a difficult place for kids who stand out, for whatever reason. Sometimes, children find it easy to pick on those who are seen as different. That could be because they look different, they talk differently, or their access needs are different. It is not natural or inevitable for people […]

The theory of Monotropism was developed by Murray et al. (2005) in their article, Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. The Monotropism Questionnaire was created by Garau et al. (2023). A self-scoring version of the Monotropism Questionnaire was created by David Cary. The information below will hopefully provide some clarity for anyone who has taken the Monotropism Questionnaire and are unsure what their results may mean. Picture 1 = an example score of some one who

Part One: Why do we have the schools we have?

Monotropism and Connections

pThe Double Empathy Problem suggests that communicative difficulties between autistic and non-autistic people are due to bi-directional differences in comm...

Initial analysis of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) suggests that mobile phone bans might help with...

Clinical Psychologist helping overwhelmed autistic people live fulfilling lives without sacrificing their mental health.

It's striking how many people fail to understand that quantified evaluations, such as standardized tests and rubrics, are no more objective than narratives & other qualitative appraisals. They just use numbers to conceal the subjective judgments that underpin them.— Alfie Kohn (@alfiekohn) February 15, 2024

Weird Pride is not about WEIRD pride, in the sense of Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic. This is an acronym used to give a name to a common problem in social sciences, but also more broadly: acting as if countries and people that broadly fit those descriptors are representative of the world at large, […]

The traditional leader wants to be right. The creative leader *hopes* to be right. https://t.co/AtkCqCvbW3 pic.twitter.com/izDm8MZlXq— John Maeda (@johnmaeda) October 27, 2016

This has proven to be a sturdy idea, and was created with Becky Bermont.

facing one of the hardest narrative arcs in the Bible armed with the truth of what really happened

This project seeks volunteers to write a single-paragraph biography about a disabled radical. The aim is to raise awareness of disability history and disabled people's involvement in radical social movements.

Another amazing spoken word response to the Warwickshire SEND Scandal. This one from glenn_advocate_of_hope on TikTok pic.twitter.com/mrbTqy0LoN— Elissa Noves (@ElissaNoves) February 11, 2024

Ken Robinson once famously said, “Students are educated in batches, according to age, as if the most important thing they have in common is their date of manufacture.” (Ken Robinson, The Element: H…

Conor Galvin sent me a link to poem I had almost forgotten, and it started thoughts spinning... ( Dr. Galvin on Twitter ) St. Kevin and ...

Art and philosophy at the limits of the thinkable

A transcript of our first keynote at Conference to Restore Humanity! 2022 with Dr. Henry Giroux. Published by Human Restoration Project, a 501(c)3 organization restoring humanity to education.

Henry A. Giroux, When Schools Become Dead Zones of the Imagination: A Critical Pedagogy Manifesto, The High School Journal, Vol. 99, No. 4 (Summer 2016), pp. 351-359

We reviewed existing research on Autistic identity and its links to mental health and wellbeing. We found that having a positive Autistic identity is important for mental health, and that having supp...

Background: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) frequently persists into adulthood. There are practice guidelines which outline the requirements for the assessment and treatment of adults. However, guidelines specifying what constitutes a good quality diagnostic assessment and report and the competencies required to be a specialist assessor are lacking. This can lead to variation in the quality and reliability of adult ADHD assessments. Poor quality assessments may not be accepted as valid indicators of the presence of ADHD by other clinicians or services, resulting in wasteful re-assessments and delays in providing treatment. To address this issue the UK Adult ADHD Network (UKAAN) proposes a quality framework for adult ADHD assessments - the Adult ADHD Assessment Quality Assurance Standard (AQAS). Methods: Five questions or themes were agreed on by the co-authors which guided the development of a set of consensus statements. An initial draft was reviewed and amended in an iterative process to reach a final consensus. Results: What constitutes a high-quality diagnostic assessment and report was agreed by consensus of the co-authors, including a consideration of both ADHD and its associated comorbidities. The resulting guideline emphasises the need to evaluate impairment, describes core competencies required by the assessor and highlights the importance of linking the diagnosis to an appropriate post-diagnostic discussion. It is recommended that 2 hours or more is required for an adequate assessment including both the diagnostic assessment and initial post-assessment discussions. Conclusion: The AQAS has been developed as a practical resource to support reliable and valid diagnostic assessments of adult ADHD. It is intended to complement formal training. A secondary objective is to empower patients by providing them with evidence-based information on what to expect from an assessment and assessment report.

For teachers to use as an assessment tool for pupils working below the standard of national curriculum tests.

22 likes, 2 comments - openmindwithdrmonica on March 11, 2023: "The model of therapy and teaching I am referring to is called the mindful engagement support mode..."

WE USED SCHOOL RULES, A BEHAVIOUR CHART AND STICKERS ON ADULTS - HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED(Written by Hanna, Clinical Psychologist at Spectrum Gaming)This year we tried out a new activity as part of the Autism in Schools train the trainer project. 1/12 pic.twitter.com/pBsJDJtO2R— Spectrum Gaming (@Spectrum0Gaming) February 9, 2024