The announcement by Duke University Medical Center that therapists have achieved significant success in reaching a nine-year-old boy with a severe case of Tourette syndrome, using behavioral therapy aimed at breaking the habit, has caused a reaction in some people connected with TS from skepticism to sarcasm and ridicule.
Rick Sheket suffered from the symptoms of the TC so much that his case can be called exhausting. Among the many other TS-tics, the boy felt compelled to make deep knee bends between almost every walking step. The impulse of therapy, which he addressed to the Duke, was to learn about the warning signs preceding his ticks, and then resist the desire to comply with them.
Here is a quote from the Associated Press article:
“For decades, Tourette’s patients were told that tics were involuntary and that they should do everything possible to ignore them.” Habitual education, the type of behavioral therapy that Rick does, preaches the exact opposite. be tic hyperconscious so they can learn to expect and suppress them."The duke was a leader in creating behavioral therapy as a treatment for children who have neurocognitive conditions, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder."
Patients with TS, like this boy, are taught to “listen to the impulse”, which is very similar to the advice that my oldest character in my story gives the boy with a mild case of TS. He advises him to learn to “swim” through repetitive patterns of thinking that preceded the decline of his ticks.
This development in the Duke makes me very interested. I never understood why Tourette syndrome was never reclassified from a mental health point of view to a “neurological disorder,” which seems to give a clear indication that the TS has some physical reason. If there had ever been suffering that was less likely to be associated with any physical abnormality, I would have thought that it would be TS; which, in my opinion, is nothing more than a variation of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Although I may be able to understand how some of the strange neural impulses in my brain are responsible for head twitching and facial grimaces that I suffered as a boy with, in my life I did not see anyone to attribute any physical the cause of verbal ticks (shouting appropriate words in aberrant times) and tics along the lines that hit this boy, for example, his feeling of performing deep knee bends for any discernible reason.
What worries me is that if TS is considered a physical condition, those who suffer from suffering are left with the feeling that their tics are unavoidable and remain awaiting a magic bullet of treatment, such as medicine or surgery. I believe that this behavioral approach is the most exciting new development in TS therapy for a while, even if the staff of the Duke do not seem to want to abandon the description of the "hereditary neurological state" of TS, which seems to undermine their own treatment. and results (if it assumes that TS is a physical
state).
The only acceptable way I can designate TS is a physical condition to accept as a fair equation, which is “brain = mind”, in long-standing discussions about the duality of the brain / mind. If the brain is identical to the mind, then no one has any control over any action, from behavioral patterns as extreme as crime, to the sensation of coercion, for example, for successive washing of hands or for taking pieces of glass from the outside. It seemed to me that psychiatrists basically put themselves outside of work, except as diagnostic and prescribing medication, if they do not want to start a neurosurgeon.
I do not accept the equation that the brain = mind, and I prefer to use a computer analogy to explain what I believe. The brain is like hardware, and the mind is the software it creates. What unique "software" results can be generated by the brain in relation to each person is determined by the composition of the brain, which is determined by genetic inheritance. It is this individualized mind software that mental health therapists try to understand and hopefully help correct the patient when it functions in such a way that it is detrimental to the patient's health.
Inside one mind, there are self-analytical abilities that the practicing psychiatric doctor tries to connect with so that the patient can get information about the functioning of his mind and, I hope, learn to take any corrective actions that can eliminate or at least alleviate the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorders.
For calling TS, the “inherited” condition is certainly not inconsistent. All of our bodies are inherited from our parents and their countless predecessors. Everything related to our hair and eye colors, to our various abilities and weaknesses, can be put on the threshold of a genetic inheritance. Sometimes scientists can find individual genes that take into account every aspect of our physical and mental compositions. Therefore, the fact that researchers are currently working on the definition of a gene (“hardware”), which renders it susceptible to infection with TS, seems meaningless, because there is a reason for each effect.
But the brain that generates the software of the mind is capable of producing many manifestations within the limits of its hereditary genetic makeup. The same mind that induces the TS sufferer to tick may well be able to adapt in consciousness to self-correction, the methodology for turning to the habit of the Duke approach.
In my essay on CU and ADHD, I stated my theory that the root cause of all mental suffering, once labeled “neurotic,” is acute self-awareness and chronic (and sometimes acute) anxiety, which often arises because of this. But what exactly do I mean by “acute self-awareness” and what is responsible for this?
Those who suffer from acute self-awareness can be compared to cars that have their own engines. too much idle. Every living animal has a survival instinct and a corresponding inherent fear of pain and death (the latter, at least in the case of humans). The sympathetic nervous system (responsible for “response” at times of danger or perceived threats) of persons with acute self-awareness is genetically hypersensitive, so that a person is acutely aware of internal sensations and perceives the environment of threats, interpreted inside, above the normal threshold. Thus, a person’s attention becomes excessively inward.
Behaviorism - a utilitarian school of psychology. It emphasizes self-knowledge, understanding and behavior modification as a means of solving and eliminating many of the misfortunes of the mind.
Dr. Claire Wicks was a really wonderful woman with whom I happened to talk on the phone. She was the first female doctor in Australia and was a pioneer in the field of nervous diseases, turning to World War I veterans with injuries. She advocated a behavioral approach in this area, which emphasizes that the patient learns about the causes of his or her suffering from a nervous disease and uses this knowledge to learn how to eliminate symptoms.
She wrote in one of her books that if she needed to accurately determine the exact moment when a person would have enough of a nervous break, this would be the moment when a person learns about her symptoms. A nervous breakdown begins when the person is no longer afraid of the initial conditions that accelerate the stress causing his or her nervous anxiety, but when the person is also afraid of the stress symptoms themselves.
For example, a person is afraid that he or she is about to suffer a heart attack as a result of his or her heartbeat after the initial cause of stress. The emergence of this secondary fear is when a nervous breakdown can occur. This creates a vicious circle of fear that feeds fear.
Dr. Weekes # 39; the approach was to soothe the sufferer that the heart is an amazingly thick muscle that can maintain a very fast heartbeat for a long period of time without harmful effects. Satisfying this knowledge (and similar recommendations) helps reduce secondary fear and allows the patient to regain confidence in his or her personal survival and ability to resolve the conditions that initially caused a sharp response.
Thus, she seemed to expect President Franklin Roosevelt to warn that: “We have nothing to fear, but fear!” She taught her patients and readers to learn to “swim” through anxiety attacks and not to worry about the symptoms themselves or to try to deal with them (adding more adrenaline), using the knowledge and methods that they learned under her leadership.
Just as in the case of those who have lost control of their nervous systems, feeding on fear with great fear, I believe that those with OCD and TS can learn to realize that, as far as it may seem otherwise, their compulsions or tics really are not involuntary. Rather, they have become inseparable from scientific behavior through repetition and reinforcement as defense attempts and concentration mechanisms caused by an insufficient condition of acute self-awareness.
I think that Duke University’s clinical staff therapy is one that deserves close attention, and if their approach continues to produce meaningful results using the behavioral change teaching method, then it is sometimes time to rethink waiting attitudes towards TS and even OCD.
Albert Einstein once remarked: “Everything you need to refute my theory [of special relativity] This is one comment to the contrary. ” If Duke's approach worked to even significantly alleviate the symptoms of the young Rick Sheke, then if such a result turns out to be able to replicate in others suffering from Tourette syndrome, it would seem that the time has come to reevaluate the TC and the approaches to its treatment. No degree of colloquial therapy, introspection or willpower could, for example, restore the vision of a person with a damaged optic nerve, a strictly physical condition,
This does not mean that other approaches, such as drugs, should be discarded, but only to argue that it is necessary to recognize that the only goal of any value for those who are concerned about people with Tourette syndrome should encompass any approach to work. to eliminate or reduce as much as possible of the problems and pain associated with this misfortune.
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Note. I do not practice medical or mental health, and my views are based on my own experience. Those who disagree with the views expressed in this essay have every right to do so, and it is always advisable to fully explore any topic before drawing any definite conclusions.
