Despite growing awareness of neurodivergence, many women remain overlooked, misidentified, or diagnosed later in life due to historically male-centred diagnostic frameworks and persistent societal expectations. This presentation aims to deepen clinicians’ understanding of how neurodivergence commonly presents in women and to strengthen confidence in recognising more nuanced and internalised profiles.

Drawing on research, clinical experience, and neurodiversity-affirming principles, this session will explore the factors contributing to missed or delayed identification, including masking, compensatory strategies, gendered socialisation, and diagnostic bias. Attendees will gain insight into the psychological, emotional, and functional impacts of late recognition, including burnout, chronic invalidation, and identity challenges.

The presentation will provide practical, immediately applicable strategies to support more accurate assessment and formulation. Key areas include differentiating neurodivergence from overlapping mental health presentations, adapting clinical interviewing to elicit less visible traits, and fostering therapeutic environments that promote safety, authenticity, and self-understanding.

The goal of this session is to equip practitioners with the knowledge and tools required to move beyond traditional stereotypes and deliver more inclusive, responsive care. By improving identification and support, clinicians can play a pivotal role in reducing misdiagnosis, enhancing wellbeing, and supporting neurodivergent women to access affirming, effective psychological services.

Attendees will leave with greater diagnostic awareness, stronger clinical frameworks, and practical approaches that can be integrated across diverse practice settings.

Interest in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) has expanded rapidly in recent years, with emerging evidence for its use in conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety, among other clinical presentations (Silczuk et al., 2025). However, Autistic individuals remain largely absent from this research landscape, despite experiencing elevated rates of trauma exposure, mental health distress, and barriers to accessing effective psychological care (Afsharnia et a., 2025). This presentation provides an exploratory overview of the current evidence base at the intersection of autism and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, with a focus on research findings to date, existing clinical guidelines, and key gaps requiring further investigation (Danforth et al., 2018).

Drawing on trauma-informed and neurodiversity-affirming frameworks, the session will explore hypotheses regarding potential mechanisms of relevance for Autistic individuals, such as shifts in meaning-making, self-relation, and emotional flexibility, alongside risks related to sensory overload, dissociation, and therapeutic misattunement. Particular attention will be given to methodological challenges, including measurement validity, heterogeneity within autism, and the need for participatory and co-designed research approaches (Yong et al., 2025). It will also consider how prevailing research practices, including exclusion criteria, outcome measures, and assumptions about emotional processing and communication, shape what is currently known and what remains invisible within the evidence base.

The presentation will conclude by outlining priority areas for future research, including inclusive trial design, adaptation of preparation and integration processes, and the development of ethical, autism-affirming guidelines to inform practice as this field continues to evolve.