Tourette Syndrome Symptoms

Sudden blinking of the eyes, abruptly emitted cries, abrupt sniffing of the opposite person: patients with Tourette syndrome show disconcerting behaviors. They can do little about it and – contrary to frequent assumptions – are not intellectually impaired.

How does a person with Tourette syndrome feel?

Imagine you feel a hiccup coming on. You’re sitting in an important meeting right now, and you’re trying your hardest to suppress it. For a while, you succeed – in that you can only concentrate on it. But then the pressure increases, the hiccups make their way – unstoppable and loud.

And now try to imagine that the hiccups manifest themselves in the form of twitching eyes, shoulders or limbs, involuntary noises, shrieking screams or the compulsive utterance of obscenities. Most unpleasant, isn’t it? That’s about how people suffering from (gille-de-la-)Tourette syndrome (TS) feel, often several times a day. In Germany, it is estimated that up to 40,000 people are affected.

What is Tourette syndrome?

TS is a neuropsychiatric disorder first scientifically described in 1885 by French neurologist George Gilles de la Tourette based on patient observations. It is characterized by so-called tics, usually sudden, involuntary (purposeless), rapid, sometimes violent movements of muscle groups (motor tics) or vocalizations (vocal tics). They occur predominantly in the same way and often in series. They are further divided into simple and complex forms.

Simple tics include motor tics such as head and shoulder jerks, grimacing and eye blinking, and vocal tics such as sniffing, tongue clicking, throat clearing, fiepping, grunting and squealing.

Complex tics include jumping, touching other people, twisting the body, making obscene gestures (copropraxia), or self-injurious behavior (SVV) such as hitting, scratching, or pinching oneself, and – as vocal forms – uttering offensive words (coprolalia), throwing out inappropriate words and snippets of conversation, and compulsively repeating sounds, words, or sentences (echolalia) or repeating self-spoken words or sentence endings (palilalia).