COVID stress
Commenting on the findings, Michele Tagliati, MD, director of the movement disorders program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, said the research highlights how clinicians’ understanding of particular diseases can be challenged during extraordinary events such as COVID-19 and the heightened stress it causes.
“I’m not surprised that these [disorders] might have had a spike during a stressful time as COVID,” he said.
Patients are “really scared and really anxious, they’re afraid to die, and they’re afraid that their life will be over. So they might express their psychological difficulty, their discomfort, with these calls for help that look like tics. But they’re not what we consider physiological or organic things,” he added.
Dr. Tagliati added that he doesn’t believe rapid tic onset in adults is not a complication of the coronavirus infection, but rather a consequence of psychological pressure brought on by the pandemic.
Treating underlying anxiety may be a useful approach, possibly with the support of psychiatrists, which in many cases is enough to relieve the conditions and overcome the symptoms, he noted.
However, at other times, it’s not that simple, he added. Sometimes patients “fall through the cracks between neurology and psychiatry,” Dr. Tagliati said.
Dr. Olvera and Dr. Tagliati have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.