The Tourette syndrome-like disorder sees teenagers suffer from uncontrollable ‘tics’ – which include outbursts, twitches, snaps, noises, swearing, kicking and hitting. Doctors are also witnessing the phenomenon around the world, where previously healthy young women have reported falling suddenly with violent physical and verbal urges. But what is causing the rapid increase in cases has baffled parents and medical authorities. One possible explanation is that anxiety and stress from extended periods of isolation combined with obsessions with apps like TikTok may have been the catalyst. “This bright, sassy, ​​fiercely independent young girl is trapped in her own body, in her own head. It’s really hard to watch,’ Melissa told 60 Minutes of her daughter Metallyka – before the teenager slapped her mother. Metallica slaps Melissa’s mother – one of several tics the teen suffers as a result of new condition afflicting young Australian girls Metallica said that “lockdowns and not seeing my friends as much” has made her tics worse. During the pandemic, her older sister Charlie also developed the same condition. “When she has her tics, I’ll leave so she doesn’t piss me off and make it worse for her,” Charlie said. Their family chose to see the two disorders in a positive light, saying some of their tics are so absurd “you can’t help but laugh” – but the reality is much sadder. Both Metallica and Charlie need constant care as they both suffer from extreme forms of the condition. There has been a spike in similar reported cases through the pandemic, mostly among teenage girls who can see symptoms appear as quickly as overnight. Doctors remain in the dark about its cause – but many believe it is directly linked to the social effects of the lockdown and addiction to social media. Michaela started suffering from extreme tics when she was 14, so her parents rushed her to the hospital. “I was serving dinner, I heard some noises and a scream and saw her lying on the floor. I thought she was having a massive anxiety attack, next thing it’s an arm and then a leg,” her mother said. “He said he didn’t want to do that. It was really scary, really scary.’ Michaela was one of the first girls to suffer from the new disorder – horrifying her parents and doctors when she was first taken to hospital after tics appeared overnight Michaela, now 16, was one of the first to suffer from the apparently new condition – admitting doctors were ‘shocked’ and ‘scared’ by her disorder. The teenager was doing handstands, rolling on the ground and even doing the splits – with her school constantly calling her parents to let them know about new tics. “I was constantly on edge,” he said. Nicole, a British 15-year-old started suffering from her tics just before her 13th birthday – with small facial twitches turning into violent physical and verbal outbursts. Her mother said the most confronting of her tics is that she usually shouts “I’m Madeleine McCann, I’ve been kidnapped” in public. Like many others, Nicole’s tics emerged during Covid when she was admittedly “very alone”. “I didn’t know what to do with myself. You can’t see friends or family, it wasn’t very nice to be,” he told 60 Minutes.
Professor Russell Dale – a pediatric neurologist at Westmead Hospital – said he was hearing of girls “all over the world” suffering from similar conditions to the young women brought to him. He said the first case he saw of the disease was in Michaela two years ago and that it was “something different” from anything he had seen before. “There were quite violent movements, hitting themselves, but the voices were also different. “Instead of simple noises, there were complex sentences – which was very strange, I’ve never seen that,” he told the programme. Experts believe it is the ‘perfect storm’ of the pandemic, prolonged isolation and reliance on social media that has caused the new phenomenon Professor Dale ruled out Tourette’s as the cause of the epidemic, as it occurs four times more often in boys and appears late from a young age. She said the key factor appears to be the stress of the pandemic combined with the overt use of TikTok and other apps – which is causing young women’s bodies to “fail”. “Girls all over the world use similar phrases – that’s what led us to believe that social media was a link to what was going on,” she said. The professor pointed to imitation TikTok videos showing tics being broadcast around the world – with 16-year-old Michaela admitting she saw the clips had triggered her behavior and even saw her mirroring it. He is now “fully recovered”, with Prof Dale saying the disorder is “definitely” something that can be overcome, but admitting that only 20 per cent of his patients have dealt with the condition. He estimates that hundreds of thousands of girls around the world could suffer from the same disease as a result of the “perfect storm” of the global pandemic.