Sykes has previously spoken about her youngest son being diagnosed with autism at the age of three, and said it gave her the push she needed to leave her marriage. “I couldn’t be in a marriage that I wasn’t happy in, in order to help him,” she told The Hot Mess Mums Club podcast.
The model and activist Christine McGuinness recently revealed she had been diagnosed as autistic. Appearing on ITV’s Loose Women on Monday, McGuinness discussed how autism had affected her life and relationships, including having to “learn how to behave”.
“I’ve always been afraid to say it out loud because I know it seems odd and it seems different,” said McGuinness, who is married to the TV presenter Paddy McGuinness. “If I go to a hotel room I will rearrange the furniture, I’ll take the pictures of the wall.”
The TV presenter Melanie Sykes has announced she has been diagnosed as autistic at the age of 51.
In an email to readers of her magazine the Frank, Sykes opened up about the “life-changing” diagnosis and her relief that things in her life had finally started to “make sense”.
“This week has been truly life-changing, or rather, life-affirming,” she wrote in the email, originally obtained by the Sun. “As many of you may or may not know, I was diagnosed with autism late Thursday afternoon. And then, finally, so many things made sense.”
She said her diagnosis had come as a huge relief and was one she would be celebrating. “I now have a deeper understanding of myself, my life, and the things I have endured.”
She described the previously unexplainable struggles she had faced throughout her career, including while working on live TV. “The sensitivities around working in television have come up,” she said. “I have always struggled with earpieces, what they call talkback, where you hear what the director says. I have often accidentally responded to the director in my ear, live on air, as I cannot juggle the person I am interviewing and the person in my ear at the same time.”
She added: “My memory has always been problematic, and remembering pieces to camera could spin me out, resulting in sleepless nights beforehand. There have been many tears of fear and frustration.”
In a video on Instagram, Sykes further explained how the conversation came up when she was making a documentary about the failures of the education system, especially for children who are autistic, so she decided to do the assessments.
“There’s a sense of relief about it and a sense of mourning. Not because I don’t want to be who I am, it’s that I wish I’d known sooner so I could have understood exactly why things were rolling the way they were rolling.
“I’ve been vulnerable to abusive people, I’ve been vulnerable to people that lie because I only see and take on board what people tell me. I’ve always been a bit funny with jokes, if somebody tells me something with a deadpan delivery I believe them.”
Sykes has previously spoken about her youngest son being diagnosed with autism at the age of three, and said it gave her the push she needed to leave her marriage. “I couldn’t be in a marriage that I wasn’t happy in, in order to help him,” she told The Hot Mess Mums Club podcast.
The model and activist Christine McGuinness recently revealed she had been diagnosed as autistic. Appearing on ITV’s Loose Women on Monday, McGuinness discussed how autism had affected her life and relationships, including having to “learn how to behave”.
“I’ve always been afraid to say it out loud because I know it seems odd and it seems different,” said McGuinness, who is married to the TV presenter Paddy McGuinness. “If I go to a hotel room I will rearrange the furniture, I’ll take the pictures of the wall.”
