Neurodivergence in UK training: a quiet mismatch worth noticing
Over the past year, there has been a noticeable shift in UK healthcare training around neurodivergence.
In GP training, neurodevelopmental conditions and neurodiversity are now explicitly named in the national curriculum.
GP trainees are expected to understand autism and ADHD, how they present across the lifespan, how they affect help-seeking and communication, and how to navigate referral pathways and reasonable adjustments in primary care.
At the same time, core CBT training has not undergone the same explicit shift.
This is not a criticism of CBT as a model, or of CBT therapists as clinicians. It is simply an observation about how training frameworks are currently written.
Instead, neurodivergent clients are implicitly included under broader headings such as working with diversity, disability, long-term conditions, and individualised formulation.
In BABCP-accredited CBT training, autism, ADHD, and neurodivergence are not named explicitly in the core curriculum or minimum training standards.
This gives training providers flexibility, but it also means coverage of neurodivergent experiences varies widely depending on the course, supervisor, or placement.
By contrast, GP training now includes a specific curriculum topic guide on neurodevelopmental conditions and neurodiversity. That means GPs are formally expected to learn about these differences as part of standard training, rather than encountering them only incidentally or through optional CPD.
Neither approach is inherently better or worse. They reflect different training philosophies.
CBT training is built around developing transferable therapeutic skills such as formulation, adaptation, collaborative empiricism, and behavioural change mechanisms. The assumption is that these skills can be flexibly applied to many client groups, including neurodivergent people, when used well.
GP training, on the other hand, is organised around recognition, differentiation, and systems navigation. Explicit naming of autism and ADHD makes sense in a role where identification, signposting, and medical oversight are central.
The practical consequence, though, is that a newly qualified GP may have more explicit teaching on neurodivergent presentations than a newly qualified CBT therapist, even though CBT therapists often work with neurodivergent clients weekly, sometimes daily.
At the moment, many CBT clinicians bridge this gap through specialist CPD, supervision, lived experience, self-directed learning, and service-level adaptations. Many do this extremely well.
Still, it is worth noticing the mismatch. Not as a complaint, but as a data point.
As neurodivergent adults increasingly seek psychological therapy, often after years of being misunderstood or mislabelled, the question is not whether CBT can work for neurodivergent people. It often can, and does.
The more relevant question is whether training frameworks keep pace with who is actually sitting in the therapy room.
Right now, GP training has begun to make that shift explicitly. CBT training, for the most part, still assumes it implicitly.
That difference matters. Not because anyone is doing something wrong, but because clarity in training tends to shape confidence, language, and clinical curiosity.
And those things quietly shape care.