How Radlyn overcame adversity
A DURBAN-BORN musician with a mission to spread mental health awareness has called on South Africans to reinforce the ideals of empathy, humility and ubuntu.
Twenty-one-year-old Radlyn Naidoo’s Tourette Syndrome was triggered by his parents’ divorce when he was nine, but his family and friends thought he was acting out, and lashed out at him.
Tourette Syndrome (TS) refers to a disorder in the nervous system involving sudden and uncontrollable movements or sounds (tics).
The disorder has been highlighted in the new Bollywood movie Hichki (Hiccup) starring Rani Mukerji which sparked a conversation about mental health awareness and the treatment of those with disorders.
Naidoo, formerly from Merebank and now studying marketing management in Pretoria, rose to fame in 2016 when a video of him singing went viral on Facebook. In the video, he explains how music helped calm the tics.
While thousands of admirers have since followed his Facebook page ‘My Life with Tourette Syndrome’, life could never be smooth sailing for him.
“My TS gets triggered when I have a high wave of emotion. Everyone thought I was being naughty, and in the Indian culture especially it was ‘mind over matter’,” said Naidoo.
Four years later, his mother took her son to a specialist, who diagnosed him “almost immediately”.
“I was able to find closure at that point because I knew what was wrong. I found that when I hummed or sang, my tics calmed down, and I practised this more often, but I was still bullied at school,” he said.
Naidoo has had to defend himself against strangers who teased him about his tics.
Last month, he and his girlfriend were asked to leave a cinema after a a cinemagoer swore at them when his TS kicked in.
“I dislocated my wrist, which happens nearly every day when I get a tic. That indicated the seriousness of my situation. The chief executive of the company has since spoken to me and we are planning an awareness programme.”
He added: “When bad things happen, how people treat to you is a reflection of them. But how you react to them is a reflection of you.”
Scan the AR icon using the IOL app to watch him sing.