Grimes Reveals Autism and ADHD Diagnosis, Claims Mental Illness Can Be ‘Contagious’

Grimes has been diagnosed with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The 37-year-old star has taken to social media to discuss her personal experiences of the conditions and to react to a meme suggesting that "excessive reading" during childhood is an indicator of ADHD.

Grimes wrote on X: "I have to say, there's this subculture of I guess 'mental health' accounts that I actually think are like, extreme infohazards.

"Got diagnosed [with] adhd/autism this year and realized I'm prob dyslexic which is why I can't spell at all without spellcheck ... I feel like, had we known this when I was a child I would have worked so much less hard, been on drugs, and so many of the weird obsessions and motivations I had would have been seen as pathological and I could have written off certain things that were very hard for me but I'm glad I overcame them. Prob [would] have been drugged too.

"Not only can mental illnesses be contagious (in school when we were learning [about] various mental illnesses me and a lot of other students noticed we would like start getting symptoms of them during those units... that [would] go away once we finished).

"But [people] r self diagnosing. And also I feel a huge percentage of adhd is screen addiction and dopaminergic burn out."

Grimes noted that her ADHD symptoms were "infinitely worse when [she] wasn't an avid reader."

The singer continued: "An adhd account trying to pathologize one of the best things a child can do to help with adhd (and also become an auto didact and knowledgeable person etc etc) is so dark.... I can't even begin.

"I think the nature of this uninformed social media mental health subculture is [really] a big concern. Some are great [of course] but a lot of these seem like explicitly anti-civilizational and geared towards making people worse."