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Lived experience, Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2023
Diagnosed as adults, autistic practitioners weighed whether to say it out loud
In short
Two psychologists diagnosed as adults and an advocate who came to the field through her son told the 2023 Autistic Pride Day Symposium how they came to the work, and what disclosure risked.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
Two of the practitioners on the panel had been diagnosed autistic as adults after years in practice, and at the 2023 Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Melbourne the panel described both how they had come to the work and what the diagnosis changed. Their answers about disclosure were the most exposed of the session. Practitioners said the diagnosis had changed how they understood themselves and left the way they worked largely as it was.
Raelene Dundon’s route ran through her family. She had always been interested in psychology and loved working with children, and had been a dance teacher in another life. University confirmed psychology for her, and her love of children took her into early childhood intervention. Then her youngest child was diagnosed autistic at four, and she was working in the industry supporting other people’s children while working out how to bring up and support her own. She moved from early intervention to her own practice, which she grew with her husband. Working more with neurodivergent people, and meeting neurodivergent adults, prompted the realisation that things she had assumed everybody did were not what everybody did. She sought a formal diagnosis about three years before the symposium.
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Sources the story draws on
- Raelene Dundon, Deakin University expert profile (opens in a new tab), Deakin University
- Raelene Dundon (30 years of psychology at Monash) (opens in a new tab), Monash University, Faculty of Education
- Professional competencies for psychologists released (opens in a new tab), Psychology Board of Australia (Ahpra)
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