A Little About Tourette Syndrome

 

Tourette Syndrome is often stigmatised by the portrayal it gets on TV and in the movies, and many people think TS is the 'swearing disease'.  In reality, roughly 10% of those with TS suffer from coprolalia (the technical term for the tic where the person with TS will utter inappropriate words or phrases).

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Tourette Syndrome (TS) is a neurological disorder that presents itself as motor and/or vocal tics. Tics can be simple, or complex, they wax and wane and vary widely from person to person. TS is a spectrum disorder, which means that symptoms can range from very mild to quite severe. It's general trajectory is to worsen as children near puberty and will generally lessen into adulthood, but not always.

 

A simple tic involves one muscle group or one simple sound. Many simple motor tics are associated with the face, head, and the neck region, such as eye blinking, head jerking, shoulder shrugging, mouth grimacing etc. Simple vocal tics include throat-clearing sounds, grunting, sniffing and coughing. A complex tic involves a coordinated movement produced by a number of muscle groups (complex motor tic) or a linguistically meaningful utterance or phrase (complex vocal tic). as examples, complex motor tics can involve touching objects or other people, jumping up and down, spinning around, or even more complex motor sequences such as imitating someone else's actions (echopraxia) or exhibiting inappropriate or taboo gestures or behaviours (copropraxia). Complex vocal tics may involve having to repeat one phrase over and over, whether it is something one heard (echolalia) or one's own last words (palilalia), or uttering inappropriate words or phrases (coprolalia).

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Often the hardest parts to deal with are the co-morbid conditions that like to tag along with TS, children/adults can have quite a mix of disorders. The most common co-morbid condition is ADD/ADHD which occurs in roughly 85% of people with TS. Other co-morbid conditions can include, but not be limited to:

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• Disinhibition

• Anxiety

• Depression

• OCD

• ODD

• ASD

• Dysgraphia

• Dyslexia

• Sleep latency

• Learning disorders

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