Interpreting Tourette’s Disorder

  Tic disorder, also known as Tourette’s syndrome, is a behavioral disorder or neuropsychiatric disorder that begins in childhood and is characterized by muscle twitching. Twitching is characterized by involuntary, sudden, rapid, repetitive, and stereotyped movements or vocalizations. For example, repeated eye-rolling, head and neck shaking, strange noises, and even swearing.  Due to the lack of public awareness of the disease, many parents mistakenly believe that their children have ear, nose and throat problems, and they go to hospitals of all sizes for long-term treatment without improvement. Some mistakenly think that this is the child’s bad problem and give reprimand, thus aggravating the disease, and even some children will be combined with mood disorders and other children’s learning, life and social function, bringing a heavy psychological burden to parents.  Tic disorder is divided into three types according to clinical symptoms and disease characteristics: 1, temporary tic disorder: characterized by simple motor tics or vocal tics, the duration of the disease within one year; 2, chronic tic disorder: characterized by simple or complex motor tics or vocal tics, the duration of the disease more than one year; 3, tic obscura syndrome: characterized by vocal and multiple motor joint tic disorder, motor tics and vocal tics at the same time The duration of the disorder is more than one year and is often accompanied by other behavioral problems. There are also specific manifestations of tic disorder, such as abnormal sensation, chest tightness, breath-holding, sigh-like breathing, violent cough, erratic, vomiting, and neck discomfort.  There are no laboratory tests that can provide strong evidence for the diagnosis of tic disorder, relying mainly on clinical information. Those with mild symptoms that do not affect life and learning can be temporarily left untreated; those with severe symptoms that affect life and learning need active treatment. The treatment of this disease is multi-dimensional and comprehensive, including medication, psychotherapy, behavior therapy, relaxation training method and other physical therapy. We hope that more people can understand tic disorder so that these children can get timely diagnosis and treatment.