About

The Neurodivergent Compendium is a structured reference of community knowledge about neurodivergent experience. It is published by the Neurodivergent Equity Collaborative (NEC), an organization in formation that aims to grow into a national body. While NEC is forming, the Compendium is published and stewarded by the Oregon Neurodivergent Equity Collaborative (ONEC), a soon-to-be-formed founding-chapter 501(c)(3).

The Compendium positions Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people as knowledge creators, not research subjects. It is not a clinical glossary. It does not translate diagnostic categories for general audiences. Instead, it documents the concepts neurodivergent communities have developed, the frameworks those communities use to understand themselves, and the intersections between neurodivergent experience and broader systems of power, health, and culture.

Every entry is grounded in peer-reviewed research, recognized advocacy literature, and documented lived experience. Scholarly rigor and community authority are treated as complementary, not competing. Deficit and pathologizing framing is excluded by editorial policy.

What the Compendium contains

Entries fall into five types.

Glossary entries are short, quick-reference answers. A working definition you can read in a few seconds, with a link to the fuller treatment elsewhere in the Compendium. The Glossary is for fast lookups, not complete coverage.

Definitions are the core full treatment: entries on neurodivergent conditions, traits, concepts, and community terms. A typical Definition includes an accessible summary, an expanded explanation, first-person perspectives from community members, connections to everyday life, relevant co-occurrence data, and a traceable history of the concept. Each Definition is what the corresponding Glossary entry points at.

Intersections cover topics that are not classified as neurodivergent conditions but connect to neurodivergent experience in documented ways. Some are biological (co-occurring conditions), some conceptual (frameworks from other fields), some structural (systems that disproportionately affect neurodivergent people). Each Intersection is a complete, self-contained entry, not a placeholder.

Articles are long-form entries, typically 1,500 to 2,500 words. The defining feature is form, not subject. An Article can cover any topic that needs more room than a Definition allows.

Stubs are honest placeholders. They mark terms that belong in the Compendium but cannot yet be written responsibly due to insufficient sources or community input.

Editorial principles

• Identity-first language, including capitalization of community-claimed terms (Autistic).
• Neurodiversity-affirming, strengths-based framing. No functioning labels. No deficit-coded vocabulary.
• Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) framing: neurodivergence is read alongside race, class, gender, and other axes of disablement, not in isolation. The full explanation lives in the Editorial Policy.
• APA 7th edition citations with verified sources. Fabricated or unverifiable citations are not included.
• Quote-status transparency. First-person quotes are marked as directly attributed, anonymous, or composite, with a published symbol key. The Compendium is honest about the difference. See the Editorial Policy for the symbol system and how composite quotes are constructed.

Licensing

Compendium content is published under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). You can share and adapt entries, including commercially, as long as attribution is preserved and derivative works are released under the same license.

Status

The Compendium is in active development. A subset of entries has been published to start; many remain in draft, stub, or unstarted status. Work continues on entry completion, citation verification, quote-status auditing, and the long-term replacement of composite quotes with verified, consented testimony.

If you would like to contribute, see Contributors for ways to share your experience, review entries, or flag errors.