Neurodiversity project aims to promote, empower ‘different brains’ on campus
Editor
ILLUSTRATION BY KATE BIZER
Jean Miller is “weird.” And she wouldn’t want it any other way.
A Washtenaw Community College English and writing instructor, Miller is, in a word she’d like to introduce to everyone, “neurodiverse” because of her psychiatric diagnoses: chronic depression and AD/HD-I (inattentive type) with Asberger’s traits.
Neurodiversity describes those who have neurological conditions, and it is also the belief that those conditions should be accepted and respected, not repressed and reprimanded. It is a response to the stigma felt by many neurodiverse individuals, including Miller.
“You’re expected to perform in standardized ways in order to get acceptance,” said Miller, 60. “So the way people with different brains have to function is often, I think, more difficult than the impairment itself.”
Her experiences, as well as her son’s diagnosis with Asberger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism, in 1995, prompted her to advocate neurodiversity and fight against stigma. She became active in the autistics movement, and wrote books on subject, including “Women From Another Planet?: Our Lives in the Universe of Autism.” Miller is now initiating a neurodiversity project at WCC.
“College campuses is where diversity of brain can really be valued and something can be done to make the environment less hostile, more welcoming to students, and everybody else for that matter who’s different-brained,” she said.
CHRIS ASADIAN WASHTENAW VOICE
Miller, who has taught at WCC since 1989, has promoted neurodiversity in her classes since she “came out” at the college in the late ’90s. She was diagnosed with her conditions in 1991 and 2004. In her classes she has mentored students with conditions such as depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, autism and dyslexia.
But she remembers her own undergraduate experience at Marygrove College in Detroit and wants to empower more neurodiverse students across campus.
As a college student, Miller sat in the library for hours trying to study and couldn’t. She didn’t have a social life because she knew a night out would be on her mind constantly and distract her. She was depressed, and thought it was a character flaw.
“College was a very, very painful experience for me,” Miller said. “. . . I thought I didn’t know how to do anything. All I knew was I was angry, and I was really timid all the time.
“That’s what I have in mind when I think of today’s college students, that some of them are probably in quite a bit of misery.”
Miller is on sabbatical this semester to start a project that will incorporate students as the catalyst for change at WCC. She wants neurodiverse students to find a voice of empowerment and promote awareness by telling fellow students about a life that isn’t understood well, and is thus stigmatized.
“I think there’s a lot of people who are afraid of psychiatric diagnoses—afraid of losing prestige and losing friends,” said Justin Nasset Fitins, 27, a science major from Ann Arbor who is involved with the neurodiversity project since he took Composition II with Miller over the summer.
“My hope is that people who are same-brained, who I call “neurotypical,” will start to see themselves not as judge and jury of people who just happen to see the world in a different way,” Miller said.
Miller has about half a dozen past students involved in the project, but one of her main goals this semester is to recruit students to brainstorm about the components and mission of a neurodiversity project at WCC.
“I don’t want to produce something and say, here students, here’s what I’ve put together in my little tool shop, because that would defeat the purpose—the purpose has to be student empowerment,” Miller said.
Fitins supports the idea of bringing speakers to campus to talk about neurodiversity and how it affects their lives.
“I think it would be just amazing to bring all sorts of people who self identify as neuroatypical, artists or mathematicians, whatever they may be,” Fitins said. “It would be an open conversation. Rather than, ‘tell me about schizophrenia and this and that and the other one,’ it would be like, ‘how do you do math, how do you do art’—the different processes they use to go about their day and thrive in the community.
Miller wants students to be able to be involved quietly, so she is looking into a Blackboard site where students could provide feedback and ideas anonymously.
“The initial thing is brainstorming, and beyond that it’s up to the students to decide how much involvement they want,” Miller sa
It was so nice to read the article about neurodiversity. Six months after my son’s adoption, we learned that he had Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. FASD is permanent brain damage caused by prenatal exposure to alcohol; it is the leading known cause of mental retardation. We also learned the FASD affects 1 in 100 infants each year, more than autism, down syndrome, cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, spina bifida, and sudden infant death syndrome combined” (www.NOFAS.org). The CDC also considers FASD a public health concern (http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/fasd/facts.html). However, few people know the challenges these individuals face every day (eg, visual and auditory processing problems, difficulty with reading comprehension, memory problems, sensitivity to sensory input, attention deficits, problems with social behaviors). So many of these individuals-diagnosed and undiagnosed-are misunderstood everyday.
Kudos to Jean Miller for bringing more public awareness to neurodiversity.
Thank you for caring enough to share, offering hope and awareness. dRowland