The Cambridge University lecturer who kept her Tourette's secret
Dr. Amanda Cole, a Cambridge University lecturer, has publicly disclosed her Tourette's syndrome after hiding the condition for most of her academic career. She hopes her openness will help reduce the stigma and shame often associated with the disorder.
Why it matters
Public disclosure by high-profile academics helps normalize neurodivergence and challenges public misconceptions about Tourette's syndrome.
Image caption, Throughout her academic life, Dr Amanda Cole has kept her Tourette's hidden - until now
Dr Amanda Cole was 15 and sitting in a religious studies class when she experienced a peculiar spasm at the back of throat. She assumed it would pass, but it was a vocal tic and her first known manifestation of her Tourette's syndrome, a condition that causes people to make sudden, repetitive sounds or movements.
"How am I going to have a family? How am I going to have a job?" Cole, 32, remembers asking herself as she lay awake at night after her diagnosis in her 20s at her home on the Debden Estate near the London-Essex border. "I thought it was going to destroy my life."
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