Autistic clients pose unique challenges for mental health professionals––challenges which are exacerbated by the fact that professional education on autism generally fails to center autistic perspectives or to convey the realities of autistic experience. This training will introduce key lessons that can be learned from autistic perspectives and from recent developments in critical autistic scholarship, and how these lessons can be applied in professional practice.

Nick Walker is a queer, transgender, flamingly autistic writer and educator whose work has helped to lay the foundations for the emergent fields of Neurodiversity Studies and Critical Autism Studies. Dr. Walker is a professor of psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies, where she trains future mental health professionals at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her writings on the neurodiversity paradigm and Neuroqueer Theory can be found at neuroqueer.com.

*Earn an additonal cultural CE (for a total of 6) by reading a publication by Dr. Walker. The reading will be sent out a few weeks prior to the workshop