Trying to figure out how to define to term neurodivergent as part of a labor organizing project and finding it really challenging.
An accurate linguistic descriptivist definition would be something like...
Neurodivergent is a term referring to people whose brain development diverged from the expected norm. It is most commonly used by Autistic people and people with ADHD as a way to refer to their shared community in a less medical manner. While it is almost exclusively used by Autistic people and ADHDers, they insist that it's an open label anyone can identify with regardless of what their specific medical diagnosis would be, including people with chronic depression, OCD, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar, and even substance use disorders and eating disorders. Sometimes people in those other groups will take the invitation to identify as neurodivergent but most of the time they don't because they perceive the term neurodivergent as being a euphemism for ADHD and Autism.
Like it's hard to accurately define it in a way that maintains a professional tone, still transparently makes it clear that most of the time it's a euphemism for ADHD and autism, but also invites other groups to identify with it. I definitely wouldn't actually use the above definition.
