Online therapy for tics offers new hope for young people with Tourette syndrome.
Findings from a recent study testing an online treatment for children and adolescents with tic disorders, have been published in the Lancet Psychiatry. The results demonstrate that an online intervention could be an effective treatment option for the thousands of children and young people without access to specialist services.
The Online Remote Behavioural Intervention for Tics (ORBIT) trial compared an online behavioural therapy with an online psychoeducation programme in 9-17 year olds with Tourette syndrome or chronic tic disorder. Participants receiving the online behaviour therapy reported a 24% reduction in tic severity after six months, compared with 12% in the education group. In addition, the behaviour therapy group reported a reduction in anxiety six months after starting the study.
Around 70,000 children and young people in England have Tourette syndrome, the condition most commonly associated with chronic tics. Tics can be abrupt movements (motor tics) or sounds (vocal tics) and have a profound impact on the lives of those who experience them. Evidence suggests behaviour therapies such as Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) used in the ORBIT study are an effective intervention for tics, yet a lack of specialist services means that only 1 in 5 people living with tics have access to behavioural treatment for tics
The ORBIT trial demonstrates that online, therapist-supported ERP is a safe and effective intervention, improving access to treatment for this under-served group of young people.
The ORBIT trial was led by Professor Chris Hollis and is a partnership between NIHR MindTech, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Great Ormond Street Hospital, University of Nottingham, University College London (Priment) and the Karolinska Institutet (Sweden). Researchers worked closely with the charity Tourette’s Action.
The study team have also created this video, explaining what tics are and how the online intervention is used: