Since 1 December 2025, the Psychology Board of Australia’s (PsyBa) updated Professional Competencies for Psychologists have been in effect, and for the first time, neurodiversity is named explicitly within them. We’re now several months into that shift, which makes this a good moment to check in honestly rather than assume the update landed and moved on without touching your practice.
For many of us who were already working to shift our assessment and therapy practices toward a neurodiversity-affirming model, this felt like validation. For others, it may have been the first time neurodiversity appeared as a formal registration requirement rather than a personal interest area. Either way, it’s worth revisiting what this actually means for your day-to-day clinical work, particularly if assessment is part of your scope.
What Actually Changed In The PsyBa Competencies
The Professional Competencies for Psychologists hadn’t been substantially updated since 2010, so this was a significant refresh. Competency 7, which addresses how psychologists respond to client diversity, explicitly names neurodiversity alongside strengths-based, trauma-informed, and positive approaches to supporting our clients. The scope of diversity the competency covers also broadened considerably, moving well beyond the handful of areas it previously addressed.
The Board (PsyBa) published fact sheets and a self-assessment template to help practitioners work out where their practice sits against the updated standards, and to guide continuing professional development planning around the transition.
Practically, this means demonstrating an understanding of neurodiversity, and applying that understanding in your work, is no longer optional or specialist territory. It sits within the core competencies every psychologist now needs to meet for general registration.
Why Diagnostic Assessment Practice Deserves A Closer Look
Assessment is where a lot of us are most likely to be working directly with autistic and ADHD clients, and it’s also where outdated frameworks tend to hide in plain sight. A report can be technically accurate and still miss the mark on being affirming, particularly for adults with internalised or highly masked presentations who don’t fit the profiles most of us were trained on.
A few questions worth sitting with as you look at your own practice, now that the update has had time to settle in:
- Does your assessment process still lean on deficit-based language as the default, even when you’re trying to write in a more balanced way?
- Are your interview tools and observational frameworks built with camouflaged and internalised presentations in mind, or do they still assume the more visible, externalising presentation that shows up in older diagnostic criteria?
- When you’re differentiating autism, ADHD, and AuDHD from other presentations, are you working from a structured, current framework, or largely from clinical instinct built up over years of training that predates this shift?
These questions are a good starting point to ensure your assessment practice reflects where the evidence and the lived experience of neurodivergent people have moved to, and where the profession is now formally expected to follow.
Where To Start
If you want a structured way to bring your assessment practice in line with the PsyBa competencies, a good starting point is looking specifically at how you assess and differentiate autism and ADHD in adults, particularly those with internalised or high-masking presentations who are most likely to have been missed by older frameworks.
My Autism & ADHD Assessment Training walks through a neurodiversity-affirming approach to diagnostic assessment, including how to work with tools like the MIGDAS-2 and DIVA-5 in a way that captures diverse adult presentations rather than just the textbook version.
If differential diagnosis is something you want to build your skills in, my upcoming webinar The 5 Step Differential Diagnosis Method sets out a structured, five-step system for distinguishing autism, ADHD, and AuDHD profiles from each other and from overlapping presentations, which is exactly the kind of structured, current framework Competency 7 asks us to demonstrate.
Both count toward your CPD requirements, so this is a genuinely useful place to direct hours you already need to log this cycle.
The Bigger Picture
The PsyBa Competencies (namely Competency 7) formalised something a lot of the neurodivergent community had been asking of psychologists for a long time: that understanding neurodiversity isn’t a specialty add-on, it’s part of practising safely and effectively. Now that it’s been in effect for months rather than newly announced, it’s worth treating this as a genuine check-in point rather than a box that got ticked back in December and doesn’t need revisiting.
If you’re not sure where your current practice sits, the Board’s self-assessment template is a useful place to start, and it will likely point you toward exactly the kind of gaps this training is built to close.
