
Anaesthetist, Mum, Autistic, ADHD & Tics. Founder @DoctorsAutistic Clinical Associate Professor @UCDMedicine #NeurodiversityInMedicine
Ireland
Joined September 2018
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Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
And we look forward to working closely with the autism community in all research projects, in line with our existing commitment to do so autismresearchcentre.com/vol…
Thank you @TrinCollCam for posting about the wonderful donation for autism research which will accelerate both basic science and applied research to improve the health and wellbeing of autistic people and their families trin.cam.ac.uk/news/professo…
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
Zero.
I read it three times to be sure.
For five straight years, not one young woman in England has died of cervical cancer. 🧵
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
A moving and important read in Psychiatric News.
Dr. Milissa L. Kaufman, a leading expert in trauma programs, shares her personal journey of diagnosis and full recovery from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) during her residency.
Dr. Kaufman’s story is a vital correction to sensationalized misrepresentations. She describes DID not as a dramatic spectacle, but as a subtle, internal posttraumatic developmental disruption characterized by memory gaps, depersonalization, and derealization.
By bringing her lived experience to light, she provides invaluable psychobiological context and models the kind of authenticity our field needs to dismantle stigma.
High-level clinical expertise and personal courage @PsychiatricNews
Full piece here: psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.…
#MentalHealth #Trauma #Psychiatry #DID #DissociativeIdentityDisorder
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
My INSAR keynote recording is now available: vimeo.com/1189802746?fl=pl&f…
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
Controversial opinion here, but Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome certainly exists and is probably grossly underdiagnosed.
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
Viruses and Joint and Tendon Pain
You had a cold two weeks ago. Nothing serious. But now your knee hurts more than it has in months. Your achilles is flaring. Your easy run felt like a half-marathon. You didn't do anything wrong. Here's what's actually happening...
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
Sometimes, quiet people make key points with brevity and impact. @mohanbhat101 does that in this short letter to the editor in one of the world’s premier medical journals @Nature
Autism in older adults: the health system must recognize its effects nature.com/articles/d41586-0…
There’s a mom at our school drop-off. Messy bun, always three minutes late, kids usually eating dry cereal out of a Ziploc. The "Pinterest moms" always whispered about her. I honestly felt a little bad for her.
Then one day at the playground, my neurodivergent son had a massive, violent sensory meltdown. I’m sitting in the dirt, crying, totally paralyzed.
The "perfect" moms just stared and pulled their kids away.
Suddenly, she’s there. The messy mom.
She drops her giant bag, sits right in the dirt next to us, pulls a heavy sensory toy out of her purse, and calmly shields my son from the crowd. No panic. No judgment. He regulated in three minutes. I was speechless.
We had coffee after. She told me her house is a disaster and she has severe ADHD, but she knows exactly what a nervous system collapse looks like.
I asked her how she deals with the judgmental stares from the other moms.
She took a sip of her cold coffee and said: "Perfect moms know how to bake organic muffins. Chaotic moms know how to survive the trenches."
Every time I see her running late now, I just smile. Girls, be like the messy mom. Stop apologizing for your chaos.
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
"Is autism a disorder? Is it just a difference?" 🧐
Disability. The word you are almost certainly looking for is disability.
Autism is a disability.
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
🗞️🗞️NEW PAPER🗞️🗞️
Congrats @auti_medic23!
The experiences of autistic medical students in relation to seeking and receiving online support
“It gave me a lot of courage… I felt a sense of… belonging somewhere”
Read free: journals.plos.org/plosone/ar…
@BSMSMedSchool
#MedEd
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
Published today in the international journal of nursing
“Perhaps the most significant omission in the clinical and academic discourse on BPD is the failure to acknowledge that the diagnosis itself generates tremendous harm.”
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/…
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
In this week’s Send for Help — my SEND agony aunt column in The Times — I argue we’re not seeing overdiagnosis, but decades of underdiagnosis finally catching up.
thetimes.com/life-style/pare…
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
Replying to @AutisticDoctor
Compelling findings, illuminating!
What’s the antidote to shame?
Finding others who accept you, “shameful” parts and all, when you are ready to shine a light on who you really are 💡
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
Nora Keegan was not trying to change public health policy. She was just paying attention.
In elementary school in Calgary, she noticed something adults kept dismissing. Children rushing out of public restrooms. Hands clamped over their ears. Faces tense. Complaints whispered between friends. It hurts my ears.
She felt it too. After using hand dryers, her ears rang. The sound lingered. Adults brushed it off. They are just loud. That is what machines do.
But Nora kept wondering why children reacted so strongly. And more importantly, why no one was measuring it.
In fifth grade, she decided to find out.
With the help of her parents, both physicians, she turned curiosity into research. She borrowed professional sound equipment. She designed an experiment. And then she went where the problem lived.
Public bathrooms.
Over two years, she visited forty four restrooms across Alberta. Libraries. Restaurants. Schools. She took eight hundred and eighty measurements. She measured at adult height. Then she crouched to measure at child height. She tested distance. Position. Airflow. Again and again.
What she found was impossible to ignore.
Many high speed hand dryers exceeded one hundred decibels at a child’s ear level. Some reached levels comparable to emergency sirens. Levels that medical authorities already prohibit in children’s toys because of the risk of hearing damage.
Children were not imagining the pain. They were standing closer to the source. Their ears were smaller. And the sound hitting them was stronger than what adults experienced.
Manufacturers claimed their machines were safe. Nora’s data showed real world conditions told a different story.
And she did not stop there.
Still in middle school, she began designing a noise reduction filter. A simple modification that lowered sound output by more than ten decibels. Proof that the problem was not inevitable.
Then she did something most adults never do. She wrote a scientific paper.
Her first submission was rejected. So she revised. She corrected. She tried again.
In June 2019, Paediatrics and Child Health published her study. Its title was direct and impossible to dismiss. Children who say hand dryers hurt my ears are correct.
She was thirteen years old.
Health professionals paid attention. Researchers cited her work. Parents shared it. Manufacturers requested meetings. All because a child trusted her own experience enough to test it.
Nora did not raise her voice. She measured. She documented. She proved.
And in doing so, she reminded the world of something simple and easily forgotten.
Sometimes the smallest voices are describing the biggest problems. You just have to listen.
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
Autistic inertia.

ALT A mindmap with the title autistic inertia pointing to eight small circles which read: difficulty starting, stopping and changing tasks; challenges transitioning between tasks and switching focus; makes it hard to refocus on task if interrupted; difficulty starting task but then will hyperfocus for long periods; feeling unable to start next task, ‘stuck’ on current task; associated with indecisiveness, anxiety and perfectionism; affected by difficulty planning or breaking down tasks; has similarities and overlaps with ADHD.
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
In communication with non-autistics, autistics "are constantly on high alert, overthinking how their words might be misinterpreted" & "try to read between the lines, which is tiring & can lead to speaking less or feeling less confident" sciencedirect.com/science/ar… mixed methods study
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
🗞️NEW PAPER🗞️
Proud of @Joyy_e_keenan!
Autistic doctors transitioning into practice
“I think medicine is really bad at times for insinuating that a certain sort of person is what they’re expecting to see”
Read: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.…
@BSMSMedSchool
#MedEd #Neurodiversity
Mary Doherty 🏳️🌈 retweeted
Please apply for this fully funded PhD Scholarship in Autism
& Addiction Research at the Autism Research Centre @ARC_Cambridge in Cambridge University. A chance to join a friendly research culture & make a real difference to autistic people’s lives cam.ac.uk/jobs/phd-studentsh…






















