May 29, 2026, 7:54 a.m. ET
TV personality Baylen Dupree gave a vulnerable revelation about her Tourette’s syndrome diagnosis.
The “Baylen Out Loud” star and Tourette’s awareness advocate, 23, revealed that when she was first diagnosed with the nervous system condition, a neurologist rescinded his initial diagnosis due to how “bad” her symptoms were.
“My Tourette syndrome got so bad to the point where all of my doctors took my diagnosis away,” Dupree said on a May 26 episode of the “Howie Mandel Does Stuff” podcast. “He’s like, ‘I have no idea what you have, but you don’t belong in society. You don’t belong in college. You shouldn’t get a job. You shouldn’t work. You shouldn’t drive.'”
Dupree said her doctor told her mother that “she will do nothing,” adding, “That’s literally what they told her.”
She said their family later learned that the doctor did not specialize in movement disorders and emphasized that he was no longer a neurologist.
“He basically was like, ‘I can’t even see you as a patient anymore because I don’t even specialize in Tourette’s.’ And we’re like, ‘Well, why didn’t you tell us this at the beginning?'” she told host Howie Mandel as well as his daughter and co-host, Jacelyn Shultz.
Around five months later, she received a proper diagnosis at the Mayo Clinic, confirming she “100%” had Tourette’s syndrome.
Baylen Dupree has long raised awareness about Tourette’s
Dupree’s condition has largely been the focus of her TLC hit reality show, which follows the lives of her and her fiancé, Colin Dooley, and premiered its third season on May 19.
Since being diagnosed in 2020, she has long used her platform to raise awareness about the experiences and misconceptions that people with the condition grapple with to her audience of 12 million TikTok followers and two million Instagram followers.
According to the Mayo Clinic, people with Tourette’s syndrome often experience involuntary muscle movements or sounds, known as tics, that can’t be easily controlled.
The Tourette Association of America states that tics can range from inconsequential to moderate to severe and, in some cases, debilitating. Both the severity and frequency of tics can vary regularly and can be in response to stress, anxiety, fatigue, illness, among other factors.
