Misconceptions About Tourette Syndrome
Can tic and Tourette syndrome be surpressed?
One of the qualities of tic is that they are typically suppressible, meaning that people can stifle them temporarily. For that reason, they're thought erroneously to be a volitional or voluntary movement. They're not. These are a neurologically driven movement. But people can stop them for a while, for a time, maybe a very short time. When they're in a social setting where they might be embarrassed by their tics, they can stop them, at least for a while.
How is tic social unacceptable?
A complex motor tic might be an obscene gesture, for example, which is going to be socially unacceptable and could get people into trouble if it's not recognized for being the problem that it is. If a child were making an offensive, obscene gesture at school repeditively, that is going to cause difficuly if it's not recognized from being a tic. Even if it is being recognized for being a tic it's going to cause that person difficulty. If people have a complex tic of taking their clothes off,for example, which is unusual, but has been reported, that's also going to be problematic for that person, obviously.
Is there a cure for Tourette syndrome?
There's no cure for Tourette's syndrome or for tics. Sometimes it tends to run its own course and subside or decline as time goes by. But the medical attention to a tic when it's troubling to people is really to try to treat the symptoms and not to cure the symptoms.
Which gender is more likely to have a tic or develop Tourette syndrome?
If we're looking purely at tic, it's more males than females, at a ratio of about three to one. If one includes all these manifestations of what could be Tourette syndrome, including the behavioral disturbances, obsessive compulsive behavior, for example, or attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, it roughly evens out to be both male and female equally.