ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1606232
Emotional Well-being in Neurodivergent Populations
Provisionally accepted
- 1Leading Indicator Systems, Boston, United States
- 2Near Bridge, Inc., Sedona, United States
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Understanding emotional well-being in neurodivergent populations remains a critical yet underexplored area in psychological research. This study employs AgileBrain, a novel assessment rooted in a neuroscience-informed model of human motivation, to evaluate emotional activation, valence, and unmet emotional needs across a large and diverse sample of adults reporting diagnosed neurodivergent conditions. The sample includes individuals self-identifying with ADHD, ASD, DCD, SID, SH, OCD, and other neurodivergent conditions, alongside a neurotypical comparison group.Findings reveal systematic variations in emotional well-being indexed by three key indicators: (1) overall valence (positive vs. negative emotional needs), (2) activation level (intensity of emotional needs), and (3) the resulting well-being index (a composite of the first two). Neurotypical respondents exhibited the highest well-being, characterized by low activation and positive valence. DCD and ASD groups showed moderate well-being with elevated activation, while groups identifying with SID, SH, and OCD exhibited increasingly negative need valence and a steep drop in overall well-being. Notably, the largest group—those reporting ADHD—showed moderate activation with a negative need profile, resulting in low overall well-being. A final group categorized as “other conditions” (e.g., depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD) exhibited the most extreme negativity in need valence and the lowest well-being scores.The study demonstrates the value of a needs-based framework for understanding emotional profiles in neurodivergent populations. By going beyond diagnostic labels to quantify emotional need dynamics, this approach offers scalable, quantitative insights into the lived experience of neurodivergent individuals and highlights distinct pathways to improving well-being. The results support the potential for targeted interventions grounded in emotional need fulfillment to enhance resilience and support across diverse neurodivergent profiles.
Keywords: Neurodivergence, neurodiversity, Unified Model (UM), Emotional needs (EN), Image-based assessment, Motivation, Emotions, neurodivergent
Received: 04 Apr 2025; Accepted: 11 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pincus and Beller. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: JD Pincus, Leading Indicator Systems, Boston, United States
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