A recent Channel 4 TV programme, Britain’s Tourette Mystery – Scarlett Moffatt Investigates, promised to explain why there has been an increase in the number of people, mainly teenage girls, who have developed tics since the start of the pandemic.
The programme featured Echo, an 11-year-old who suddenly developed tics on the first day of school, just after she had fallen out with her best friend. Overnight she was “jumping, twirling, clapping, making noises”. She has tics that involve hitting her mother and involuntarily calling her a “stupid motherfucker”. She describes herself as having “sudden-onset Tourette’s”. After moving to a new school, within a few months, her tics stopped.
