Melanie Sykes opens up about autism diagnosis on Loose Women

Melanie Sykes says "we need to change" society's attitude surrounding autism to a more positive one, following her own diagnosis earlier this year.

While appearing on Loose Women yesterday (November 23), the TV presenter opened up about her experiences for the first time and explained how she's learning more about herself every day since discovering that she's on the spectrum.

"Every minute of every day I'm starting to have realisations about all my sensitivities. I've been working with Harry Thompson, who's an autistic speaker and knows everything there is to need to know about it," she told panellist Charlene White.

ITV

"We were working on a documentary about the education system and how it doesn't serve autistic people," continued Sykes, whose son Tino was diagnosed when he was three years old.

"He was round at mine and we were chatting… 10 minutes in he sort of thought I might have an ADHD/autistic profile based on how open I am, how expressive I am, my ability to pick up and drop lots of different bits of conversation and keep it lateral."

The 51-year-old went on to explain that while this has been "a big thing" for her, she's not speaking out publicly about it get attention on a personal level, she said she's "here for everybody that has been diagnosed, who’s a bit embarrassed about it."

"I know what makes me autistic and it's the fabric of who I am and who I've always been and I think I'm great. I don't need the air time, I don't care about the column inches – I've had 25 years of this and that's not what I did it for," Sykes noted.

Getty Images

"My phone has blown up with mothers of teenage girls, who are like, 'I've just shown her your video and they're like 'It's a good thing'. And it is a good thing because it's all the positives about someone. They call it a disorder, which needs to get scrapped because it isn't the things I can't do, it's the things I can do that are my autistic sensibilities. That's what we need to change."

Sykes concluded the chat by talking about how it often takes young girls or women longer to get diagnosed than boys or men, because the latter tend to "hide it well" – intentionally, or not.

"It throws up that question of if you're being tested on how a boy or a male presents a certain condition or disease like heart disease, it looks very different to a woman. Why are we being looked at in the form of man when we're completely different animals? We've got to start looking at woman and what happens with that woman."

Loose Women airs weekdays from 12:30pm on ITV and ITV Hub.