What distinguishes patients with mass social media-induced illness presenting with Tourette-like behavior from those with Tourette syndrome? Results of a prospective cohort study

Abstract

Since 2019, a global increase in patients presenting with functional Tourette-like behaviors (FTB) has been observed. This has been related to the exposure of tic-related content in social media, although other factors seem to further fuel this phenomenon. Recently, we, therefore, proposed the term mass social media-induced illness (MSMI) as, in our opinion, this phenomenon constitutes a new type of mass sociogenic illness (MSI) that is in contrast to all recent outbreaks spread solely via social media. In accordance with this hypothesis, we were able to identify the host of the German YouTube channel "Gewitter im Kopf" (“Thunderstorm in the brain”) as the initial virtual index case. The purpose of this paper is to present clinical characteristics of a sample of 32 patients diagnosed with MSMI-FTB compared to a large sample of patients with Tourette syndrome (TS) and other chronic tic disorders (CTD) (n = 1032) from the same center in Germany indicating clinical factors helpful to distinguish between tics in TS/CTD and MSMI-FTB. Our main findings were: in patients with MSMI-FTB compared to those with TS/CTD we found (i) a significantly higher age at onset, (ii) a significantly higher rate of females, (iii) a significantly higher rate of obscene and socially inappropriate symptoms, (iv) a significantly lower rate of comorbid ADHD, and (v) a significantly lower rate of OCD/OCB. In contrast, rates of comorbid anxiety and depression as well as reported frequencies of premonitory urges/sensations and suppressibility of symptoms did not differ between groups.