مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Sociodemographic properties and accompanying disorders of children and adolescents with tic disorder

Abstract :

Purpose: The aim of this study is to determine the sociodemographic features of children and adolescents with tic disorders diagnosed by using DSM-IV criteria and their occurrence of any comorbid psychiatric disorders.Materials and methods: A total of 48 children and adolescents aged 7-16 years who, admitted to the Child and Adolescent psychiatry outpatient clinic, have been diagnosed with tic disorders according to the DSM-IV criteria and had normal intelligent quotient (IQ) constitute the patient group. The control group consisted of 48 children and adolescents with the same age and gender range as the patient group, who admitted to the same abovementioned clinic, had no tic disorders and had normal IQ. The exclusion criteria of the study were as the following: the presence of a severe neurological disorder, mental retardation detected with parametrical measures and/or clinical evaluation and the presence of other disorders which had organic etiology. Children depression inventory (CDI), Screen for Child Anxiety and Related Disorders (SCARD) and The Maudsley Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory were used for evaluating depression, anxiety and obsessions respectively.Sociodemographic features of the sampling were evaluated by using “Semi-structured interview form, created by authors of this study” and comorbid psychiatric disorders were determined according to the DSM-IV criteria. Electroencephalography (EEG) and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-revised (WISC-R) or Stanford Binet Intelligence tests were carried out for all subjects. For statistical analysis, Student’s t test, Mann Whitney-U test and Chi-square were used when it is appropriate. p 0.05 was accepted as statistically significant. .Results: The mean age of cases was 10.9 ± 2.4 years (77.1% of them (n=37) were male and 22.9% of (n=11) were female. “Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)” was found at an 18.8% rate in all cases as well as “Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; 25% of all)” and “Enuresis nocturna (14.5%)” as another comorbid psychiatric disorder. The most frequent “motor tics” were “eye-movements (81.2%)” and the most prominent “phonic-vocal tics” were “throat clearing (50%)”. By the far most seen “complicated motor tics” were self-crush behaviour (33%) and “complicated vocal tics” were 29.2%.Conclusion: Tic disorder was more prominent in males and in adolescents. At least one psychiatric disorder was mostly accompanying with the tics disorders. ADHD, OCD, elimination disorders, depressive disorder and anxiety disorders were frequently found psychiatric disorders. ADHD frequency in children with tic disorders and OCD frequency in adolescents were significantly prominent.