R&B singer Chrisette Michele has shut down the doubt about her autism diagnosis in a new video.
On Wednesday (July 23), the Grammy winner discussed social media users questioning her neurodivergence in a video posted to YouTube and shut down the perception that people with autism have a certain look.
“There’s a lot of comorbid mental health issues that can exist along with autism,” the “Be OK” vocalist said around the 23-minute mark of the video below. Symptoms of autism vary, but those who are diagnosed can often struggle with social
“And a lot of times, on the outside or people outside of the autistic community see someone who has a comorbid or co-existing mental illness or has an IQ of this number or that number—they will assume that, ‘in order to be autistic, your IQ has to be this. In order to be autistic, you have to also be experiencing this,’”
Michele, 42, announced in a June 16 Instagram post that she had received an “official” autism diagnosis and said that the lifelong “challenges” she’s endured “finally make sense,” per Billboard.
“There was a uproar. It was literally viral. My coming out about being on the spectrum,” Michele said elsewhere in the video. “And so I'd been through this before where something that I said or did caused an uproar. And I knew that the best thing to do was not to hate or to fight or to cause more confusion, but to get quiet and listen.”
Michele’s draws parallels to fellow singer-songwriter, SZA, who recently revealed on her personal Instagram page that she has high-functioning autism.
