Welcome to the February 2019 edition of The Bridge. The focus of this edition is Tourette Syndrome, a condition, which has much stigma attached, stereotyped views by society about what it means and a lack of national clinical guidance.
We are gradually gaining better understanding of how common it is, the nature of the symptomatology as well as the effectiveness of treatments. Tourette Syndrome is seen clinically by both paediatric and child and adolescent mental health settings. This reflects possible differing clinical perspectives that this is either a motor or a behaviour/habit/impulse disorder. There is ongoing debate regarding what kinds of services should take responsibility for diagnosing and treating it. Clinically it also appears to be worsened by stress and anxiety and having Tourette Syndrome can affect an individual’s mood and self-esteem. The waxing and waning of symptoms certainly does not help in establishing whether a treatment is working or not and clinical views also differ on what medications are helpful, what works best or how to treat effectively in a non-pharmacological way.
In this edition of The Bridge, we have summaries of research published by ACAMH within our portfolio of journals by the original authors, as well as by one of our in-house science writers.
Hopefully some of your questions about its nature as well as what is shown to work and how well for managing the symptoms will be answered. You may be surprised by what you read…