The Behavioral and Emotional Profile of Pediatric Tourette Syndrome Based on CBCL in a Chinese Sample.

Yonghua Cui,Ying Li,Yanlin Li,Jiahui Chu

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2022.784753

Yonghua Cui, Ying Li + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.784753

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Abstract

BackgroundTourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood-onset neuropsychiatric disorder that has a unique status of a quintessentially neuropsychiatric condition at the interface of neurology (movement disorder) and psychiatry (behavioral/emotional condition). However, the behavioral and emotional profile has seemed to be neglected in the literature thus far. This study aimed to investigate the behavioral and emotional profile of TS.MethodsA total of 124 patients aged 6–16 years with TS were included in this study, including age- and sex-matched health control, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and major depressive disorder (MDD) groups. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) was used to screen the behavioral and emotional profile of the TS and other compared groups. The Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS) was used to assess TS tic severity. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to investigate the difference between the TS and other compared groups.ResultsThe results showed that the eight factors of the CBCL had no association with motor tics, vocal tics, or tic severity (p > 0.05). However, positive correlations were identified between functional impairments (subscales of YGTSS) and thought problems (TP) and rule-breaking behavior (RBB). Based on the eight-factor profile of the CBCL, TS showed a similar profile to MDD but different from ADHD and OCD, which showed similar profiles.ConclusionsBased on the assessment of the CBCL of TS, it was found that “pure” TS might show fewer behavioral and emotional problems than OCD, ADHD, and MDD. Similar behavioral and emotional profiles were identified between TS and MDD, but not OCD and ADHD. More attention needs to be paid to the thought problems and rule break problems in the CBCL in the screening stage, which might have a potential influence on the functional impairments of TS.

Highlights

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood-onset neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by multiple motor tics and one or more vocal tics that persist for at least 1 year [1]
For the percentage of males, the TS group was 70.97%, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) group was 70.08%, obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD) group was 70.31%, major depressive disorder (MDD) group was 69.29%, and healthy controls (HCs) group was 68.46%; there was no significant difference among these groups
Similar behavioral and emotional profiles were identified between TS and MDD, but not OCD and ADHD

Summary

Introduction

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood-onset neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by multiple motor tics and one or more vocal tics that persist for at least 1 year [1]. TS holds a unique status of a quintessentially neuropsychiatric condition at the interface of neurology (movement disorder) and psychiatry (behavioral/emotional condition) [2]. To the best of our knowledge, the behavioral and emotional symptoms of TS include attention problems, aggressive behavior, anxiety/depressive symptoms, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and so on [5] Most of these symptoms are associated with the comorbidities of TS. It should be noted that comorbidities make the behavioral and emotional symptoms of TS more “complex.” Some studies have highlighted that “pure” TS (only tic symptoms) might be different from TS-Plus (that is, TS+OCD, TS+ADHD) [10, 11]. Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood-onset neuropsychiatric disorder that has a unique status of a quintessentially neuropsychiatric condition at the interface of neurology (movement disorder) and psychiatry (behavioral/emotional condition). This study aimed to investigate the behavioral and emotional profile of TS

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