Getting a diagnosis is just the beginning…
There is a moment that many late-diagnosed neurodivergent people describe in almost identical terms. The diagnosis comes through - ADHD, autism, or both - and for a short while, it is a relief. Years of unexplained difficulty suddenly have a name. The way you have always worked, the things that have always been hard, the patterns that made no sense - they make sense now.
And then, usually quite quickly, comes the next thought - now what?
Because the diagnosis itself does not come with a manual. There is no follow-up support on the NHS. There is no one who sits you down and says: here is what this means for how you work, here is what you might need, here is what you could do differently. You are handed a piece of paper and sent back into the same life, the same job, the same industry. Except now you have a label for the thing you have been managing alone for years.
You get diagnosed, and then it's ‘see you later’. What should happen is people get sent straight to coaching. Instead, most people are left to figure it out themselves.
The years before the diagnosis
For many neurodivergent people in the film and TV industry (particularly, but not always, women) the diagnosis comes late. Sometimes very late. The decades before it are often marked by a different kind of labelling: too sensitive, too intense, too much, too abrupt, too reactive – the list goes on! Or the clinical version: anxiety, depression, personality disorder. These are not misdiagnoses in the sense of being invented. They are real experiences. But they are often the downstream consequence of an unidentified neurodivergent profile. Of a brain that has been masking, overextending, and burning through its reserves for twenty or thirty years without anyone recognising why.
Masking is the word used for the process of suppressing or hiding neurodivergent traits to fit in with neurotypical expectations. It is exhausting in a way that is difficult to convey to someone who has never done it. Every social interaction requires monitoring. Every workplace communication involves an additional layer of translation. Every day involves performing a version of yourself that is not quite who you are, while managing the actual cognitive and sensory demands of your job on top.
The film and TV industry is a particularly high-masking environment. It is freelance, which means your livelihood depends on your reputation. It is hierarchical, which means expressing needs upward feels professionally risky. It is fast-moving and high-pressure, which means there is rarely space to pause and acknowledge that something is not working. And it is an industry where difficulty is culturally expected to be absorbed rather than named.
What perimenopause has to do with it
There is a pattern that comes up repeatedly in coaching work with women in the industry. A woman in her forties or early fifties who has been functioning - managing, coping, succeeding - suddenly finds that she cannot mask any more. The capacity that she has been drawing on her whole life, the one that allowed her to adapt and adjust and perform, is no longer available in the same way. Everything becomes harder. She is told it is burnout, or perimenopause, or stress. Eventually, if she is fortunate, someone looks more carefully and identifies the neurodivergent profile that was there all along.
This is not a rare story. The hormonal changes of perimenopause interact with neurodivergent neurological profiles in ways that are only beginning to be properly researched. What is clear is that many women receive their first neurodivergent diagnosis in their forties and fifties - not because the neurodivergence arrived then, but because the masking capacity that concealed it finally gave way.
For the film and TV industry, this means there are significant numbers of experienced, senior professionals, women who have navigated decades of a demanding industry, who are currently struggling without anyone understanding why, including themselves. Consider that over 90% of neurodivergents over the age of 40 are still undiagnosed!
The sensory things that seem small but are not
One of the things that coaching conversations reveal repeatedly is how much energy neurodivergent people spend managing sensory discomfort that they have never named, because it has always just been there, always been part of the background, always been something they assumed everyone experienced.
This is not unusual. Neurodivergent people frequently reach adulthood without having identified their own sensory profile. What environments help them focus, what inputs drain them, what small adjustments would make a significant difference to their daily functioning. Partly because no one asked. Partly because they assumed the discomfort was normal. Partly because the energy required to function despite it has been so constant that it has become invisible.
Post-diagnosis, these things become visible. And that is where coaching becomes important, not as therapy, and not as a substitute for clinical support, but as a practical process of building self-knowledge: what do I actually need? What has been draining me? What would help me work in a way that is sustainable rather than just about surviving to the end of the week?
What the industry could do differently
Access coordinators, where they exist on productions, provide the kind of practical, ongoing support that makes a real difference to neurodivergent cast and crew. But as it stands, that support is inconsistent. Present for one series, gone for the next and dependent on individual production decisions rather than industry-wide expectation.
The broader cultural shift that is needed is one where disclosure does not feel professionally risky. Where a neurodivergent crew member who has recently been diagnosed can say what they need without worrying that the HOD will quietly not rehire them next time. Where the question 'what do you need to do your best work' is asked as a matter of routine rather than in response to a crisis.
None of this requires waiting for a diagnosis. The majority of neurodivergent people in the industry are undiagnosed, or in the years-long queue for assessment, or self-identified without formal confirmation. Creating environments that work for them does not depend on paperwork. It depends on understanding that brains work differently, that masking has a cost, and that the industry's exceptional talent pool is quietly burning through its reserves.
Burnout is huge in this industry, but it is not inevitable. A significant proportion of it is preventable, if we understand what is driving it.
The diagnosis is not the end of the story. For most people it is somewhere near the middle. What comes after it - the coaching, the self-knowledge, the adjustments, the slowly reducing need to mask - is where the actual change happens. The industry has a role to play in making that possible.
NeuroJungle delivers neurodivergence training for film and TV organisations and production teams. To find out more, visit our services page or get in touch at hello@neurojungle.co.uk.