Adapting the NHS Five Steps to Mental Wellbeing for Neurodivergent Individuals

The NHS Five Steps to Mental Wellbeing is a simple, evidence-based framework designed to help everyone improve their mental health. By incorporating these five actions into daily life, individuals can build resilience, manage stress, and experience greater overall life satisfaction. The five steps are connect, be active, take notice, keep learning, and give.

However, the framework is written from a neurotypical perspective. For instance, the guidance on connecting with others cautions against relying on technology or social media without acknowledging the very real challenges many autistic people and people with ADHD face around social anxiety, sensory overload in groups, difficulty reading social cues, or sustaining attention in conversation.

This article adapts the NHS Five Steps for autistic individuals and people with ADHD, focusing on four key principles throughout:

• Predictability
• Individual interests
• Sensory considerations
• Executive function support

1. Connect

The challenge for people with autism and ADHD can be social anxiety, sensory overload in groups, or difficulty with social cues and sustained attention.

• Focus on quality over quantity: prioritise connecting with a few trusted people — family, close friends — rather than large social groups.
• Structured interaction: use shared interests as a foundation for connection (e.g., join a highly specific club or an online community around a special interest).
• Non-verbal connection: engage in parallel play or shared activities that don’t require constant eye contact or conversation, like building, crafting, or walking.
• Plan and prepare: for social events, set a time limit; know the environment in advance; and have a quiet area or exit plan identified if needed.

2. Be Active

Executive dysfunction (common in ADHD) can make starting and maintaining routines difficult, while sensory sensitivities (common in autism) can make traditional exercise environments challenging.

• Make it interest-driven: find activities that genuinely interest the individual — martial arts, parkour, dancing to favourite music, or movement-based gaming.
• Sensory-friendly environments: opt for activities in quiet, predictable, or private spaces (a home gym, early morning swims, or walking a familiar route). Avoid overly loud or bright gyms if possible.
• Movement for focus (ADHD): Incorporate movement into tasks — pacing while on a phone call, using a standing desk, or using fidget tools during static tasks.
• Hyper-focused activity: use hyper-focus to engage deeply in a sport or activity, but be mindful of burnout and schedule in rest.

3. Take Notice

Mindfulness can be difficult when the mind is racing (ADHD) or preoccupied with intense focus (autism). Reframing “taking notice” as a sensory and structured practice rather than an abstract one makes it far more accessible.

• Focus on sensory input: instead of abstract awareness, focus on concrete sensory details that are calming or interesting — the texture of a soft blanket, the taste of a favourite food, the pattern of light on a wall. A consistent scent cue — like a familiar room spray used at the same time each day — can become a grounding anchor for this kind of noticing. Our Hollow Calm™ is designed specifically for moments of overwhelm and sensory grounding.
• Special interest as mindfulness: Engage deeply in a special interest as a form of focused, calming presence.
• Externalise noticing: use structured tools like a mood tracker, a journal, or an app to log feelings and observations rather than relying solely on internal processing.
• Predictable transitions: use routines and sensory cues to help with transitions between tasks, which can be a key source of anxiety and distress.

4. Keep Learning

Motivation for learning is often high in both autistic people and people with ADHD, but challenges can arise from distraction (ADHD) or a preference for deep knowledge over broad topics (autism).

• Leverage special interests: direct learning toward special interests for maximum motivation and engagement. Deep-diving into one topic is often more rewarding than surface learning across many.
• Bite-sized information (ADHD): break down learning goals into very small, manageable chunks to overcome the difficulty of starting and maintaining focus. Use visual aids and varied formats – videos, audio, and hands-on.
• Structured and predictable learning: choose learning environments that are structured and clear, such as online courses, 1:1 tutoring, or self-directed learning in a controlled setting.
• Gamification: turn the learning process into a game with measurable progress and rewards to tap into the ADHD need for stimulation and novelty.

A calm, consistent study environment supports focus. A familiar scent used only during study sessions can help prime the brain for learning — our Lucid Thread™ Focus Spray is formulated for exactly this purpose.

5. Give

Giving can be a powerful way to connect and feel purpose, but it must be manageable and align with personal strengths.

• Defined, contained tasks: volunteer for specific, time-limited tasks with a clear start and end point that utilise organisational or detail-orientated skills — organising a library, data entry, and quality control.
• Skill-based giving: use existing special interests or skills to contribute — coding for a non-profit, teaching a specific skill, or creating art for a cause.
• Remote or asynchronous giving: consider opportunities that don’t require face-to-face interaction or a rigid schedule, such as admin work from home or making donations.
• Micro-giving: focus on small, daily acts of giving that are less taxing — offering a clear, specific compliment, helping a family member with a known task, or sharing specialist knowledge with someone who’s interested.

The NHS Five Steps are a genuinely useful framework — they just need adapting to reflect the reality of neurodivergent experience. Predictability, sensory awareness, interest-led engagement, and executive function support aren’t workarounds; they’re the conditions under which many autistic people and people with ADHD genuinely thrive.