Rapid onset of functional tic‐like behaviours in young adults during the COVID‐19 pandemic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Clinicians have reported an increase in functional tic-like behaviours in children and youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. We describe adults developing rapid onset of functional tic-like behaviours between May 2020 and June 2021. METHODS: Data were analysed from the Adult Tic Disorders Registry, a single-site,12-month prospective cohort study that began enrolment in January 2021. We compared clinical features of participants with Tourette syndrome or persistent motor/vocal tic disorder to participants with rapid onset tic-like behaviours. RESULTS: Thirty-three participants registered between January and June of 2021; nine had rapid onset tic-like behaviours, and 24 had Tourette syndrome or persistent motor tic disorder. Participants with rapid onset tic-like behaviours were younger (19.9 vs. 38.6 years, p = 0.003), had older age at onset (15.3 vs. 10.1, p = 0.0009), and were more likely female (p < 0.0001). They had higher motor and vocal tic severity and impairment scores (all p < 0.01) and were more likely to have complex arm/hand motor tics (p < 0.0001), complex vocal tics (p < 0.0001), and coprolalia (p = 0.004). They had significantly higher scores on all mental health symptom self-report measures (all p < 0.05) and were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with depression (p = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: The clinical features that help differentiate rapid onset tic-like behaviours from Tourette syndrome or persistent motor tic disorder include their phenomenology, onset age, and clinical course. Rapid onset tic-like behaviours are a distinct subtype of functional neurological disorder that has emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic in young people and appears to be strongly socially influenced.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".