During the last few years’ pandemic, doctors around the world have noticed an increase in young people seeking help for their tics. Oddly enough, the majority of patients are teenage girls and most have one thing in common: the social media platform TikTok.
Videos with the hashtag “tourettes” have over five million views. In the films, famous influencers talk about their tics, and also show how both verbal and physical tics manifest themselves. Studies now show that people have developed a similar behavior to that seen on TikTok. The question then is: Can you be infected by tics?
Well, that would be to simplify. Nanette Mol Debes is a senior physician and clinical lecturer at the Tourette Clinic at Copenhagen University Hospital.
– It is important to distinguish between Tourette’s syndrome and this functional tic-like behavior, which we have decided to call it internationally, because both the cause of the symptoms and the treatment are different, she says.
The image of a person with Tourette’s syndrome is a person who swears uncontrollably and says bad words at inappropriate times, but Pelle Sandstrak, who has Tourette’s himself, wants to nuance that image.
– It’s such a cliché. Tourette’s doesn’t have to be that you say something or make sounds at all, it can also be jerks or compulsive movements, he says.
Guests in the program: Pelle Sandstrak, lecturer and author, Helene Ringberg, psychologist and Niklas Dahl, senior physician and professor of clinical genetics at Uppsala University.
Program manager: Ulrika Hjalmarson Neideman
Producers: Olivia Sandell & Alice Lööf
Source: ICELAND NEWS