Autism diagnosis at 34 helps to explain years of meltdowns
Comedian Fern Brady’s opens up in moving memoir
West Lothian comedian Fern Brady says she faced a fierce battle for autism awareness after years of ‘meltdowns’ led to diagnosis in her 30s
Fern was diagnosed with autism in 2021 after years of battling to understand her emotions.
She was in her 30s when a series of meltdowns led her to seek out answers, and at the age of 34 she was diagnosed.
While performing a stand-up comedy gig in Berlin in 2017, the star joked that she didn’t fit in with other women.
Afterwards, a woman in the audience approached her and told her it sounded like a description of autism, sparking her four-year battle to be diagnosed.
Growing up in Bathgate, she was often misunderstood and found herself regularly in trouble, causing the star to have ‘meltdowns’ as she felt so overwhelmed.
Tragically, Fern was misdiagnosed with OCD in her teens and later advised to go on antidepressants which she revealed did little to make her life feel more manageable and she began self-harming.
Heartbreakingly, at the tender age of 15, she took an overdose of pills and ended up in a mental health unit.
She told the Metro: “I think I was really privileged to get put in a mental unit, because now teenagers can’t get anything.”
Now, more than a decade later, she has penned a deeply moving memoir ‘Strong Female Character’ which details her experience of being a female who is autistic.
The memoir explores class, mental health, societal pressures and individual ambition.
While writing her memoir, Fern revealed that she often considered how her autism revelations might affect her comedy career.
She said: “I kept thinking, ‘This is probably going to ruin things for me’.
“But then I reassured myself that the people I’m most worried about are probably not going to read it, although quite a few comedians I’ve sent it to have read it. I had a lot to say about autism and didn’t feel like it was stuff that I could say in stand-up, because not everyone is interested in autism stuff.”
Prior to her diagnosis, at the age of 17, Fern’s relationship with her parents became so strained that they asked her to move out, leaving her couch surfing while she completed her exams at Edinburgh University.
In a bid to make ends meet, Fern began working in a strip club, realising that this was the most autism-friendly of the jobs she’d had, which included retail and admin. She said: “I just think it’s absolutely insane that one of the jobs I stayed in the longest was one that was perfectly set up for an autistic.”
Adding that in hindsight, she believes some of her co-workers were also autistic. She said: “‘Whenever you’re in groups of outsiders and on the fringes of society, that’s where you’ll find autistic people. I met really cool girls. I felt really at home there.”
Following her diagnosis, the star has campaigned for autism awareness, supporting Autistica – an autism charity which funds and campaigns for research to understand autism – and its Anxiety Breakthroughs campaign for World Autism Awareness Month.