IN BRIEF
FROM THE MEMBER
OUR REVIEW
@drbendybrain is the Instagram account of Dr Jessica Eccles, a psychiatrist and Reader in Brain-Body Medicine at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She researches how joint hypermobility connects with neurodivergence, anxiety, pain, fatigue and interoception. She chairs the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Neurodevelopmental Psychiatry Group and has received a Research Pioneer Award from The Ehlers-Danlos Society. She also describes herself as hypermobile and neurodivergent. Posts share research findings, media appearances and links to her BendyBrain YouTube series. The account may suit practitioners who want an evidence-informed, UK-based view of the body in neurodivergent experience. It is a social media account, not peer-reviewed material, and posts are short summaries of more detailed work. Some linked papers are preprints that have not yet been peer-reviewed. The framing is clinical and research-led, so lived experience comes through her own voice rather than community co-production.
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Why this may be of benefit
For practitioners, neurodivergent people and others supporting neurodivergent people, this account can offer language for how body and brain experiences connect. It may support reflection on the pain, fatigue and anxiety clients bring, and how these can be overlooked or misread.
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Anything worth knowing before someone reads or listens
Some posts discuss the ADHD overdiagnosis debate and related media coverage, which some readers may find charged. Medical terms such as “disorder” and “comorbidity” appear throughout.