Neuro News
Neuro News
Week of 19 October 2026 | Neuroinclusion for workplaces and individuals
Happy Tuesday!
It's Mental Health Month in Australia, and most organisations will mark it the same way: a reminder about the EAP number. This week looks at why that default doesn't reach a large share of your workforce — plus a ten-minute focus hack, and the ADHD trait that rarely makes the checklist.
Cass
Founder | The Neurodivergence Voice
0419 423 746
Neuro at Work
Neurodiversity at Work: The EAP is not a neuroinclusion strategy
For most organisations, the Employee Assistance Program is the main control for psychosocial and mental health risk. It's built on a set of assumptions: you can identify that something is wrong, put it into words, make a phone call to a stranger, and get value from a short, talk-based counselling model.
For many neurodivergent employees, each of those steps is a barrier. Phone-based intake is one of the most commonly avoided formats. Generic counsellors often aren't trained to tell a neurocognitive difference from anxiety or low mood. And a lot of what neurodivergent staff struggle with at work isn't emotional in the first place. It's executive function, sensory load, unclear communication. Counselling doesn't fix a problem in how the work is designed. Organisational psychologist Dr Nancy Doyle has made this point directly: an EAP on its own is a risky substitute for practical support such as adjustments, coaching and assistive technology.
The data points the same way. In the CIPD's 2024 Neuroinclusion at Work survey, 49% of neurodivergent employees felt supported by their employer to perform at their best, compared with 63% of neurotypical employees. The wellbeing gap was much wider than that. Of neurodivergent staff who felt supported, 63% said work had a positive effect on their mental wellbeing. Of those who didn't feel supported, only 9% said the same. Only 12% of employers offered external coaches or support workers.
The audit question for P&C: When you list your controls for psychosocial risk, how many of them assume a neurotypical way of noticing, naming and asking for help? If the answer is "the EAP and a wellbeing webinar", there's a gap in your hazard controls, not just in your inclusion work.
Neuro Hacks
Neuro Hack: Move before you focus
Before a task that needs sustained concentration, do 10–20 minutes of moderate aerobic movement first. That could be a brisk walk, stairs or a short ride. It's not general wellness advice. It's a targeted primer for executive function.
A 2026 meta-analysis in Psychology of Sport & Exercise (Xu, Zhao & Hu) found that a single exercise session gave adults with ADHD a moderate improvement in inhibitory control, the ability to hold back the impulse to switch or react. Core ADHD symptoms improved by a small but consistent amount. Unmedicated adults showed the largest gains. An earlier controlled study (Mehren et al., 2019) found that moderate-intensity cycling improved interference control in adults with ADHD.
How to use it: Put the walk directly before the hard task, not at lunch. Treat it as part of starting the task, not a break from it. A caveat: the evidence base is small (around four studies per outcome) and the effect is short-lived. It's a tool for getting started, not a fix for everything.
Neuro and Cass
Emotional dysregulation, the ADHD trait that isn't on the checklist
The DSM-5 criteria for ADHD cover inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. They don't include emotional regulation. Yet a major review in the American Journal of Psychiatry (Shaw et al., 2014) found that clinic-based studies report impairing emotional dysregulation in roughly 34–70% of adults with ADHD.
In practice it looks like this: a fast emotional response, more intense than the situation seems to call for, and slow to settle. Frustration spikes over a small obstacle. Irritability builds across a long day. Excitement or disappointment is out of proportion to the event. It's not the same as Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which we covered in September. RSD is tied to perceived rejection. Emotional dysregulation is broader and can be set off by almost anything.
A 2023 systematic review in PLOS ONE (Soler-Gutiérrez et al., 22 studies) concluded that the evidence supports treating emotional dysregulation as a core feature of adult ADHD rather than a side issue. The effect sizes against controls were consistently meaningful.
Why it matters:
For late-diagnosed adults: Many people spent years with a label like "too sensitive", "moody" or "difficult", or a misdiagnosis, before ADHD was identified. Knowing that emotional intensity is part of the same neurology changes how you read that history.
For managers: A visible reaction in a meeting is not proof of poor professionalism or a performance problem. Give people time to process. Avoid surprises in high-stakes conversations. Separate the immediate reaction from the decision that comes after it. Those three steps do more than a conduct conversation.
Cheers,
Cass Nicholson | Founder | The Neurodivergence Voice
Brisbane QLD, Australia +61 0419 423 746
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