A teal and purple ribbon uncurling across the screen. Suicide Prevention Awareness ribbon

World Suicide Prevention Day 2024

Current Events & Awareness Days, Definitions and Explanations by Jen

WARNING: This article contains references to suicide, suicidal ideation, and the expression of suicidal thoughts. Please do not continue if this is likely to cause you intolerable distress, or negatively impact your own mental health or wellbeing. If you do read this article and need support, there are phone numbers and links at the bottom of the page.

Mental health and neurodivergence go hand in hand for multiple reasons. Firstly, many mental health conditions are a form of neurodivergence in themselves (though this is still debated in the academic community). Secondly, there is suggestion that people with neurodivergencies such as ADHD,  are genetically more likely to have neurobiological mental health disorders such as Boderline Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, etc. And finally, the experience of being neurodivergent – particularly in a neuronormative society – can result in conditions such as anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and eating disorders. So how can we support our neurodivergent young people concerning their mental health?

Avoid The Bad

It is not the usual More Than Quirky approach to focus on negatives, so let’s rip this bandaid off quickly.

Our neurodivergent kids are far more likely to experience negatives than their neurotypical peers. This can be genuine and perceived, but both are impactful and damaging. Some can be avoided. Not all, but quite a lot.

This is probably the fifth time I’ve used this quote on the More Than Quirky website, but it is crucial that we, as parents and teachers and friends, are aware of the impact we are having on young people:

IT IS ESTIMATED THAT THOSE WITH ADHD RECEIVE 20,000 CORRECTIVE OR NEGATIVE MESSAGES BY AGE 10. THEY VIEW THEMSELVES AS FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT AND FLAWED.

Dr. WILLIAM DODSON MD

Phrasing is so important when it comes to our neurodivergent kids. 

  • Don’t tell your clapping-stimming child they’re “being annoying”; let them know you’re feeling overwhelmed by the sound, and ask if there’s another stim that would satisfy them, or do what you need to cope (take a moment to go to the toilet, pop on headphones and listen to some music, join in!).
  • Don’t tell your ADHD kid that they’re useless or a disaster or costing you money because they’ve lost their school hat again. Talk to them the same way you’d want to be spoken to. How about, “I’m concerned we’re spending too much time and money on the hat situation, and I can see it’s frustrating for both of us. What could we both do to help those hats come back from the playground every lunchtime, and home from school?”
  • Don’t say, “Forget it,” or “Don’t worry about it,” or “Nevermind,” if you’re trying to explain something to a kid with a processing disorder and they’re not getting it. Try, “You know what? I don’t think what I’m telling you is actually that important. Let’s let it go for now, and I’ll think about how I can communicate it better. Can you tell me about your day?”
  • Don’t assume your child can’t/won’t/isn’t/doesn’t if it’s to their detriment. Give them a shot, but also give them space and safety to fail with a, “I’m proud of you for trying!” as the response.
  • Don’t put too much pressure on your child. If they’re experiencing School Can’t, investigate your options. If they have a meltdown every week about not wanting to go to Karate, look into whether this is a transition issue or because they hate going to Karate.
    • One of my core memories when learning how to drive (utter hell for me and both of my parents!) was one of them pointing out that “Even [INSERT NAME LOCAL KID THEY DIDN’T THINK HIGHLY OF] got his license. You just need to try harder!” Every time I made a mistake after that, I (incorrectly) felt this made them compare me with that kid, and prefer that kid; that they now felt all the great things I was achieving that that kid couldn’t do was worth nothing because I couldn’t drive.1
  • Don’t let other people ridicule your child in public, talk about them in their presence as if they’re not there or not able to understand, talk about them when your child is not there in a way you wouldn’t be proud of sharing, criticise them, control them, dismiss them, or anything else you wouldn’t want done to you.
  • Don’t encourage your child to adopt neurotypical skills that contradict their own needs or comfort. Autistic kids don’t need social skills lessons. ADHD kids don’t have to utilise “the 5 Ls” in class provided they’re not having a negative impact on anyone else and they are doing their best to listen. Kids with Childhood Apraxia of Speech are fine with their mates communicating however is best for them; AAC devices aren’t just for classrooms and shops, peers often learn to understand imperfect voice-spoken language perfectly well, and if a class can learn some basic phrases in Farsi because there’s a new kid starting who doesn’t speak much English yet then I don’t think it’s a huge ask for them to learn some Auslan for a signing child either.
  • Don’t brush off depression, anxiety, distress, anger, etc, as “poor emotional regulation” or being logical given their situation. It hurts just as much, and it can have just as many negative impacts in the short and long term. If your child is struggling emotionally or with potential mental health issues, do not justify or ignore this!

Balance It Out

Now for the fun stuff. 

It’s one thing to remove as much of the negative input as possible, but my favourite approach is to pretend that “good stuff” is water, and “bad stuff” is oil. 

Imagine each child has a tall glass beaker with a big red loveheart on the side, like an ombrometre of contentment. Your child’s might be half-full of nasty, thick, sludgy, stinky oil. If you add some lovely, cleansing, clean, sparkly water, not only does it mean that heart doesn’t just contain bad stuff, but if you keep adding the good stuff, the bad stuff is going to float, and get lifted and lifted and lifted until it spills out the top and down the sides and washes away.

We can’t prevent our children, particularly neurodivergent children, sadly, from being hurt. From experiencing or perceiving negativity. From encountering less-than-wonderful people, from making mistakes, from having struggles. But we can do our utmost to empower them to deal with these bad things in the best possible way, and we can both provide positives and teach them strategies to empower themselves.

The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.

Doctor Who (Matt Smith), 2010

A significant part of this balancing act is seeking and utlising external support and guidance when needed, and ensuring that neuroaffirming practices are employed at home, school, and in a medical setting.

Unfortunately this isn’t always straightforward. Only this week I’ve been struggling with the fact that a local service provider who promotes themselves as neuroaffirming and having multiple ND staff members is advertising a social skills program that teaches neurotypical social engagement in a very-much-not-neuroaffirming manner. 

Similarly, many online groups – particularly containing a specific parenting stereotype – will promote options and therapies as being excellent for autistic children, and giving positive results, but are actually encouraging highly detrimental behaviours that result in long term trauma and mental health problems.

If you’re ever unsure if a provider or approach is neuroaffirming, please Google it, look up if it’s mentioned in neurodivergent circles, or send me a message and I’ll see what I can find out for you.

SEEK THE GOOD

So what are some of the good things you can ensure your child is exposed to and surrounded by?

Praise

I don’t care if you think your child is going to have a massive ego and a head too big to fit through the front door, if they do something well, praise them. I’m not saying to make things up. You don’t need to praise them for being amazing at spelling if they got every word in their list wrong, but you can still praise them for something truthful like how hard they tried, or how much their handwriting has improved, or that they did their homework days before it’s due, or that they remembered to bring home their homework book.

Gratitude

Like praise, don’t over-egg the pudding. But it does (everyone!) wonders to hear, “I love spending time with you,” or “I’m so grateful you put your own shoes on when you could see I was running late,” or “Thanks for holding the door open for me.”

Replace apologies with thanks

As parents of neurodivergent kids, it’s pretty normal to feel a bit stretched. We often feel like we need to be in fifty places at once, or achieving more than the average person (often due to our own neurodivergencies!), or that we at least could do with a clone. So we tend to apologise a lot. What we don’t realise is how much this communicates to others that we have let them down, even when we haven’t. That we have deprioritised them, even when we haven’t. That we have failed them, even when we haven’t.

So next time you want to say, “Sorry! I know I said I’d help you with your homework. The washing took longer than planned. I’m sorry I’m late,” try, “Thank you for being so patient while I put out the washing. Shall we tackle that homework together?”

Investigate Neurotypes

While not everyone agrees, most neurodivergent adults – particularly the late-diagnosed ones – feel that knowing and understanding your neurotype allows for a lot of good (self-understanding, forgiveness, accommodation, lenience, solidarity, social benefits, etc) and prevents a lot of bad (low self-esteem, social isolation, fear, anxiety, anger, depression, self-hatred, feelings of failure and low self-worth, etc). Personally, I would recommend telling your child about their neurotype.

There are some incredible resources out there including Sandhya Menon’s beautiful books, Yellow Ladybug’s resources, and many amazing books for older kids from the likes of Chloe Hayden and Abigail Balfe.

By giving your child a better understanding of themselves, they are also given access to relevant role-models. People like Chloe Hayden, Kaelynn Partlow, and Michael Theo, demonstrate that autism, for example, doesn’t need to be hidden or make you incapable of being amazing humans doing incredible things. There are spectacular role models out there for all neurotypes; but to understand that these people are specifically relevant to them, your child needs to first recognise themselves as something other than broken or strange.

Be in their corner

Whether that’s body-doubling, co-regulation, strategising together, being a safe space for big feelings, talking through school dramas, encouraging interests and glimmers, advocating for them at school or in a medical setting when they’re inadequately supported, or simply being their biggest cheerleader, be the person your child needs.

There will be plenty of people in the world telling them what they’re doing wrong, what they need to work harder at, what’s weird or wrong or difficult about them… you don’t need to be that. You need to be the antidote.

Teach skills

Neuroaffirming skills taught in a neuroaffirming way.

Encourage your child to adopt “rest” as a necessary scheduled activity. Work on positive self-esteem using affirmations, journaling, self-reflection, daily gratitude, and engaging with a community. Empower your child to speak up for themselves, request accommodations, ask people to explain things again or differently if they need it, state when they’re uncomfortable and what they need. Teach them that saying something like, “I can’t do the 5 Ls all at once because I have ADHD, so I won’t be looking at you when you speak but I will look at the board when you share anything I need to see to understand, and I won’t have my hands still but they won’t be touching or distracting anyone else,” isn’t rude; if anything it’s educational for the teacher and other students!

I remember the incredulity and delight of a teacher when my six year old said to them during a maths class, “My brain doesn’t always work like everyone else’s. Is there a different way you could explain how to do this activity?”

Help

Asking for help, and accepting help, are both incredibly difficult for many neurodivergent people, for many reasons. This can be because of a perceived judgement of being incapable. It can be because they feel they’ve tried many times and been let down, so they assume it’s not an option. Sometimes it’s because they know they can do something, at significant personal cost, so feel that asking for help is lazy, admitting defeat, or giving other people a negative impression of their abilities.

RSD can be a complication, where if the help isn’t given willingly, or willingly-enough, they feel like the person doesn’t actually want to help them or that they’re being judged.

PDA can also make this incredibly difficult, as asking for help is frequently met with being told to do, or not do, something, which immediately makes the help impossible to accept.

Model needing help, asking for help, and accepting help. And if this is something you also find difficult, investigate this, see if you can improve your own approaches, and then model it; win-win!

Suicide

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. And while talking about how to minimise negative impacts on mental health, and promote wellbeing, is great, it doesn’t address what to do if your neurodivergent child appears suicidal, or is expressing that they are.

When It’s A Feeling Not a Desire

The level of distress experienced during a meltdown is immense. I don’t think it’s possible to adequately put it into words, however many analogies and clever language tricks are employed. Combine this with the prevalence of alexithymia in neurodivergent kids, and it makes appropriately describing, demonstrating, or expressing these massive feelings nigh on impossible.

When your child is dysregulated and they say, “I wish I was dead,” or “I want to kill myself,” or “I wish I’d never been born,” or other similarly concerning statements it can simply be that they are feeling what seems to be the biggest negative emotion imaginable, and so they are illustrating it with the biggest negative expression they can grasp. It can be that they’re feeling so incapable of tolerating the pain associated with this emotion that they’re expressing that they can’t imagine how much longer they could live through it. Not all expressions that sound like suicidal ideation are actually that. 

However, and I cannot express this enough, I would always err on the side of caution. If you don’t know whether to interpret what they’re saying as “This really hurts and I’m not coping,” or “I genuinely want to be dead,” you will always want to address the latter – with urgency – and keep your kiddo safe.

Self-Esteem

When neurodivergent people experience low self-esteem, ongoing correction and criticism, or perceive that their behaviours are having a negative impact on people they love, they may use expressions like, “I bet you wish I’d never been born,” or “You’d all be better off without me”. Again, while this isn’t necessarily a warning of suicidal ideation, I would always suggest addressing this directly rather than brushing it off. 

Some people perceive these sorts of statements as “fishing for compliments”. It is not how I feel the majority of neurodivergent people utilise them, however, if this is a struggling person’s way of saying, “I really need to hear that you don’t hate me, resent me, wish I was dead, and that in fact you actually like something about me and want me here,” then who does it hurt to tell them? Why withhold potentially life-changing positivity because you don’t feel it’s been appropriately requested?

Genuine Depression and Suicidal Ideation

It is crucial that at this point I remind everyone that More Than Quirky is not medical advice; it is tertiary education and lived-experience informed guidance.

If your child seems depressed, withdrawn, says statements like those above, is highly anxious, is frequently dysregulated, experiences School Can’t, has sleep disturbances such as insomnia, demonstrates major changes in temperament or behaviour, adopts “darker” interests, rejects previous passions and hobbies, has unexplained injuries, increases peer conflict, changes weight rapidly, self-medicates, or anything else that concerns you please seek help.

While it is not always easy to obtain help for our kids, particularly neurodivergent kids, this is not one to accept “No” or “Sorry” or “I think you’ll find that’s just being a teenager” (the adolescent version of “they’re just quirky”) about.

Your GP or local hospital are key resources, particularly if they already know your child well.

Please see below for additional resources More Than Quirky recommends. Phone numbers are for people in Australia.

Help

Yellow Ladybugs Mental Health resources:

From HealthDirect:

  • MindSpot is a free telephone and online service for people with anxiety, stress, low mood or depression. It provides online assessment and treatment for anxiety and depression. MindSpot is not an emergency or instant response service. Call 1800 61 44 34.
  • Head to Health gives advice and will connect you to local mental health services. Call 1800 595 212.
  • MensLine Australia is a professional telephone and online counselling service offering support to Australian men. Call 1300 78 99 78, 24 hours/7 or chat online.
  • headspace provides free online and telephone support and counselling to young people 12 – 25 and their families and friends. Call 1800 650 890, or chat online.
  • SANE Australia provides support to anyone in Australia affected by complex mental health issues, as well as their friends, family members and health professionals. Call 1800 187 263 or chat online.
  • 13YARN provides 24/7 free and confidential crisis support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Call 13 92 76.
  • QLife provides nationwide telephone and web-based services for LGBTQIA+ peer support and referral for people wanting to talk about a range of issues including sexuality, identity, gender, bodies, feelings or relationships. Call 1800 184 527.
  • Butterfly National Helpline is available for anyone in Australia concerned about eating disorders or body image issues, either for themselves or someone they care about. Call 1800 33 4673.
  1. Can one of my lovely readers please remind me to write about my journey from “Vomiting if I need to sit in the driver’s seat even with the engine off” to “Casually trundling around a major city in my big car with multiple children and pets”? It’s a good illustration of autistic abilities and needs. ↩︎