A few days ago Tom Schofield got in touch to tell us about his YouTube video channel The Tom One.

Tom shares “Hello everyone, I’m Tom and I’m a 26 year old man with Asperger’s Syndrome, ADHD, Bipolar disorder and Irlen Syndrome. I got my first diagnosis when I was five years old and that was ADHD after my primary school said I was too much of a wild child. A few years later at age 8, I was given a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome and finally some accommodations were made for me at school.

At 21 I was dragged to the doctor by my then wife after experiencing extreme mood swings over a period of several months and he diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, then a few years later at 26, I saw a specialist optician after complaining about extreme light sensitivity that had plagued me my whole life, and it had started becoming worse. He told me that I had a form of vision disorder called Irlen Syndrome, a condition that is very common in autistic people, but not exclusive to us. It’s where your eyes function as usual (meaning you can have visual disorders and still have this) but your brain can’t perceive the visual input properly.

I made these videos because I wanted to help people understand autism a little better, and hopefully offer some insight into what it’s like to live with day in and day out. More videos will be done in the future, including some involving some of my friends, who are also autistic.”

He goes on “I made the videos because there was a lot of research done on autism, but hardly any of it was done by autistic people themselves, never mind portrayed it from a perspective that knew how it felt to be in these situations. I got tired of people misunderstanding behaviour from us as bad or strange, when they didn’t understand the reason. I also wanted to help parents understand their autistic children a little better.”

You can watch Tom’s videos which cover such topics as loneliness, eye contact and sensory overload by clicking on this link.