Does it seem as though more people are coming out as neurodivergent these days? Perhaps you've heard complaints that social media—particularly TikTok—is driving a trend. Or maybe you've encountered the suggestion that neurodivergence has somehow become fashionable, a label people adopt for attention, status or belonging.

For neurodivergent people, these claims can be deeply dismissive. They reduce complex experiences and real struggles to a passing cultural craze.

My research suggests something quite different. Far from being a modern phenomenon, neurodivergence has a long history. In other words, people whose ways of thinking, sensing or behaving differed from social expectations have always existed. Members of my research project have described discovering these historical figures as like finding neurodivergent ancestors.

Of course, this is not about diagnosing people who lived centuries ago with autism, ADHD or other conditions. Diagnostic categories have their own history. They change over time and can be shaped by specific cultural and geographical contexts. Moreover, I am not a doctor or a psychologist, and I am not interested in retrospectively diagnosing historical people.

What interests me is something broader: the many people in the past who were understood—by others or by themselves—as different.

One example is Hannah Allen. She was an English widow who published an account of her experiences in 1683. She wrote about periods of profound melancholy and hearing voices, drawing on journal entries she kept during those difficult years. Stories like Allen's remind us that people have long searched for language to describe minds and experiences that did not fit comfortably within accepted norms.

People have always adapted and reshaped the language available to them. Today, clinical terms regularly spill into everyday conversation. People talk about being "anxious" about an exam or "depressed" by bad weather, without necessarily claiming a diagnosis. Literature has always transformed and enriched our understanding of medical and psychological concepts.

In my work, I define neurodivergence as ways of thinking, sensing or behaving that diverge from social expectations. What's also important is that those expectations vary across time and place. Behavior regarded as unusual in one context may be entirely acceptable in another.