Young women around Australia are being struck down by a mystery neurological illness – with experts fearing social media addiction and pandemic stress is triggering the problem.
The Tourette’s syndrome-like disorder is seeing teenagers suffering from incontrollable ‘tics’ – which include outbursts, twitching, pops, noises, swearing, kicking and hitting.
Doctors are also witnessing the phenomenon across the globe where previously healthy young women have reported suddenly coming down with violent physical and verbal impulses.
But what’s causing the rapid increase in cases has parents and medical authorities baffled.
One possible explanation is that anxiety and stress stemming from extended periods of isolation coupled with obsessions for apps like TikTok, may have been the catalyst.
‘This bright, spunky, fiercely independent young girl just 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 teen slaps her mother.
Metallyka said ‘lockdowns and not seeing my friends as much’ has worsened her tics. During the pandemic her older sister Charlie also developed the same condition.
‘When she has her tics I’ll walk away, so it doesn’t set me off and make it worse for her,’ Charlie said.
Their family have chosen to look at the two disorders positively, saying some of their tics are so absurd ‘you can’t help but laugh’ – but the reality is much sadder.
Both Metallyka and Charlie require constant care, with both suffering extreme forms of the condition.
There has been a steep increase in similarly reported cases through the pandemic, largely in teenage girls who can see symptoms appear as rapidly as overnight.
Doctors remain in the dark about its cause – but many believe it is directly linked to the social consequences of lockdowns and the reliance on social media.
Michaela began suffering from extreme tics when she was 14, coming on so fast her parents immediately took her to hospital.
‘I was serving up dinner, I heard some noises and a yell and saw her laying on the floor. I thought she was having a massive anxiety attack, next thing an arm is flying then a leg,’ her mother said.
‘She said she didn’t mean to do that. It was really scary, really really scary.’
Michaela, now 16, was one of the first to suffer from the seemingly 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 inform them of new tics.
‘I was constantly on edge,’ she said.
Nicole, a British 15-year-old began suffering from her tics shortly before her 13th birthday – with minor facial twitches transforming into violent physical and verbal outbursts.
Her mother said the most confronting of her tics is she will commonly shout ‘I am Madeleine McCann, I’ve been kidnapped’ in public.
Like many other cases, Nicole’s tics came on during Covid when she was admittedly ‘very lonely’.
‘I didn’t know what to do with myself. You can’t see friends or family, it wasn’t a very nice thing to be in,’ she told 60 Minutes.
Professor Russell Dale – a pediatrics neurologist at Westmead Hospital – said he was hearing of girls ‘all over the world’ suffering from similar conditions to the young women being brought to him.
He said the first instance he saw of the illness was in Michaela two years ago and that it was ‘something different’ to anything he had witnessed before.
‘There were quite violent movements, hitting themselves, but also the vocalisations were different. Rather than simple noises there were complicated sentences – which was quite bizarre, I’ve never seen that,’ he told the program.
The rest is here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066299/Tourettes-illness-affecting-young-women-experts-blame-TikTok-Covid-lockdowns-60-Minutes.html
Another cover for their murder death kill shot
Why this is only happening in teen girls–as if teen boys don’t use TikTok and weren’t lonely during lockdowns–when teen girls, not teen boys, have menstruation periods and female hormones tells me that something in those ‘vaccines’ have affected these teen girls and not teen boys–hormone-wise. But doctors must be cowards these days and not reveal what the likely truth is–can’t lose their medical licenses, now can they? Who knows? They may also have removed their mirrors…can’t look themselves in the mirror, now can they? (You know that ‘look yourself in the mirror’ screed from ‘V for Vendetta’…)