A defining criterion of Tourette is symptoms-involuntary tics-that start between age 2 and age 15. Anyone who has Tourette first got it as a child, probably during school, when peers can be ruthless to anyone out of the mainstream. Recent studies show that the greatest frequency and severity of tics occurs for most children around middle school. It's a
terrible time to be twitching and barking. Read more of the article...

Tourette's Syndrome is very close, in terms of genetics, to ADHD. As a result, those with Tourettes and those with ADHD may share a lot of symptoms, and it is common for children or teens with Tourette Syndrome to be misdiagnosed as having ADHD. When this happens, typically the child or teen is started on stimulant medication, and sometime within 18 months the tics associated with Tourettes will begin.

Here are our thoughts on this from our reply to a letter from a reader:

Dear Dr. Cowan, Read more of the article...

Let’s begin by pointing out that we have recently written about ADHD and Depression in Teenage Girls, and have even produced a brief internet video on the topic. As reported in that article, females with ADHD tend to have the “inattentive” type of ADHD (what we refer to as Winnie the Pooh type), where males tend to have the “impulsive-hyperactive” type or a “combined type” of ADHD (what we refer to as Tigger type ADHD). Read more of the article...

Depression and ADHD in Teenage Girls