At the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance (NMHCA), we don’t just advocate for change — we embody it.
We are a national peak body led by people with lived experience of mental health challenges: people who’ve endured distress, coercion, exclusion, and survival — and who are now leading the redesign of the very systems that once harmed us.
This year, as proud sponsors and presenters at the Neurodivergence and Wellbeing Conference, we’re naming something powerful:
The mental health consumer movement and the neurodiversity movement are not separate fights. They are interwoven struggles, rising from the same root: systems that have punished difference and pathologised pain.
“These movements are not just aligned — they are entangled. Our fights are shared. Our futures are shared too.” — Jolene Stockman, Māori autistic speaker and author
From Survival to Strategy
The mental health consumer movement began over 50 years ago—from psychiatric wards, grassroots organising, and communities who refused to be silenced. We challenged forced treatment, discrimination, and exclusion. And we built peer-led alternatives grounded in rights, dignity, and self-determination.
The neurodiversity movement, led by neurodivergent advocates, reframed so-called disorders as natural variations in human experience. It rejected the idea that different means deficient—and asserted that neurodivergent people don’t need to be fixed. We need to be heard, supported, and respected.
We may use different terms — mad pride, neurodivergence, lived expertise—but we face the same systemic barriers:
- Schools, services, and workplaces not built for us
- Systems that mistake difference for danger
- Tokenistic consultation without real power
- Diagnostic labels used to undermine, not empower
- Gatekeeping that sidelines peer knowledge
We Are Not Broken. The System Is.
At the Alliance, we work across the country to ensure mental health consumers lead reform—not just participate in it.
We’re fighting for:
- Peer-led services, not clinical gatekeeping
- Rights-based laws that protect against coercion
- Support grounded in dignity, not deficit
- Choice and consent, not control and compliance
- A system that sees difference as strength, not risk
We’re not interested in softening the edges of broken systems. We’re here to transform them.
This Is Your Movement Too
Many mental health consumers are autistic, ADHDers, or otherwise neurodivergent. Many neurodivergent people live with mental distress. Yet systems and policies often divide us—into diagnostic silos, service gaps, and disconnected funding streams.
But we know the truth:
There is no clean line between neurodivergence and distress—especially in a world that punishes difference.
That’s why we’re calling for a shift beyond diagnosis — toward collective liberation.
We don’t want inclusion in systems that weren’t designed for us. We want systems that are co-created by us from the ground up.
“We don’t need to change who we are to fit the world. We need to change the world to make space for who we are.”— Sonny Jane Wise
Join us
Whether you identify as neurodivergent, mad, sensitive, disabled, a survivor — or you reject all labels — you are welcome here.
You hold the wisdom that systems need.
Your experiences are not a problem to be managed.
They are blueprints for justice.
We are stronger together—and we are just getting started.
How to Get Involved:
Visit us at www.nmhca.org.au
Signup to our mailing list:
Follow us on social media @NMHCAlliance
Join your local consumer peak
Because “Nothing about us without us” isn’t a slogan.
It’s a demand. And we’re here to make sure it’s met.
The National Mental Health Consumer Alliance are a partner for the 2025 Neurodivergence Wellbeing Conference, put on by the Australian & New Zealand Mental Health Association.
