"We are led to believe that there is only one right way to be intelligent: rational, quick, orderly, adherent to the demands of daily life. Instead, we should remember that the norm is first and foremost a statistical concept and that variability is a fundamental characteristic of our species. We are all different, but diversity in itself is not a disease, nor a deviation to be corrected. It becomes a disorder when it compromises daily functioning in a persistent and significant way, when it produces suffering and negatively affects relationships, learning, sociability, and autonomy.

Today there is a risky tendency: to give a clinical name to every effort, even when it does not fall within the pathological area. The risk is that children and young people end up feeling the weight of diversity as a defect, while it could be recognized as originality, cognitive style, peculiar way of being in the world. But the opposite also applies. «When the difficulties are significant and really interfere with daily life, a timely and accurate diagnosis can be crucial. It does not serve to close a person within a definition, but to increase awareness, guide interventions and reduce suffering. The problem arises when we medicalize what is only different, or when we trivialize what instead makes you suffer. 

It happens, for example, when you describe a child as "a little autistic", "a little ADHD", "a little dyslexic", using clinical words inaccurately and making him feel sick. But it also happens when, faced with an important effort, one responds with phrases such as "exert yourself", "committed like the others". They are phrases that don't help. They make the wrong guy feel, guilty of not having a standard way of thinking, learning, getting excited or communicating," Vicari continues. 
When, then, can a neurodivergence become a disorder? «When individual characteristics produce stress, suffering or significant compromise in daily life. Think, for example, of a guy who doesn't have an autism spectrum disorder, but shows some atypicalities in social communication and relationships. If he lives in a very demanding context, not very welcoming and not very willing to adapt, he can be forced every day to pretend to be different from what he is," says the expert. This continuous effort has a name: camouflage. It means masking, adapting, imitating the behavior of others so as not to appear out of place. In some situations we all do it. But when it becomes a daily social survival strategy, it can have a high cost. «If we do not recognize people in their specificities, if we force them to homologate themselves to a model too far from them, we risk turning a difference into suffering. Recognizing neurodivergence does not mean naively celebrating every difficulty, nor erasing the need for care when there is a disorder. It means understanding when a difference must be accepted, when it must be supported and when it requires specialist support," -

—Stefano Vicari, head of Neuropsychiatry of Childhood and Adolescence at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart