Environmental and relational responses may reduce aggression in neurodivergent and trauma-exposed populations

Recent work has shifted understanding of aggression from an individual deficit model toward a neurocognitive and systems-level framework. Transdiagnostic models conceptualise aggression as emerging when perceived threat load exceeds available regulatory capacity, involving interacting mechanisms of threat responsivity, emotion regulation, and inhibitory control. Evidence from developmental adversity and neurodiversity research further indicates that variations in threat sensitivity and regulatory thresholds may increase vulnerability to escalation under high-threat conditions, while interoceptive processing shapes how threat is embodied and regulated. Integrating these perspectives with social-ecological frameworks suggests a dynamic account in which environmental instigators interact with neurocognitive vulnerabilities to influence aggression risk over time. Here, we integrate transdiagnostic neurocognitive models with neurodiversity and developmental adversity research to argue that relational and environmental conditions actively regulate threat load rather than simply providing background context. Within this framework, neurodiversity-, trauma-, and shame-aware (NeST) approaches can be understood as environmental strategies that reduce perceived threat and support regulatory capacity through predictability, co-regulation, and relational repair. This framing therefore conceptualises aggression as a context-sensitive threat-regulation response and identifies environmental design as a pathway for prevention, with implications for research and intervention targeting threat regulation across settings.