Autistic people are often said to lack social skills and have deficits in pragmatic language, leading them to misunderstand non-autistic people. Recent research points to a more complicated picture: the double empathy problem. The double empathy problem is a concept that people of different neurotypes struggle to empathise with each other. It suggests that it's not just autistic people who struggle to understand non-autistic people but also the other way around (Milton, Gurbu

Specialist competence should be grounded in a knowledge of the principles and foundations, along with a basic understanding of the historical development of the field, and not only detailed memorization of guidelines and diagnostic manuals. In the field of psychiatry, a lack of understanding of history and the progress that has been made means that one may not appreciate how far we have come. Although the history of modern psychiatry is not very long, it is rife with examples

The scene is etched in my mind. A medical doctor standing in his spotless, off-white coat in a room one immediately conjectures must be in a typical hospital. He has a slight smile on his face, looking thoughtful and straight in the camera like a character in countless hospital dramas. When one takes the eyes of the doctor and looks at the surroundings one immediately realises that this is not an ordinary hospital. This is a small clinic in a remote African village. The ceili