February 14, 2023

"Mysterious symptoms can spread rapidly in a close-knit community, especially one that has endured a shared stress."

"The TikTok tics are one of the largest modern examples of this phenomenon. They arrived at a unique moment in history, when a once-in-a-century pandemic spurred pervasive anxiety and isolation, and social media was at times the only way to connect and commiserate. Now, experts are trying to tease apart the many possible factors — internal and external — that made these teenagers so sensitive to what they watched online. Four out of five of the adolescents were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, and one-third reported past traumatic experiences.... In new research that has not yet been published, the Canadian team has also found a link to gender: The adolescents were overwhelmingly girls, or were transgender or nonbinary — though no one knows why."


"TikTok tics" are "acute explosive motor and vocal tics," as seen in various TikTok videos. We're told these new patients "did not fit the mold of a typical case of Tourette’s, which generally affects boys and begins in early childhood" and usually involve "simple movements — like blinking or coughing — and they wax and wane over time." The new cases appeared suddenly and in an exaggerated form, with "relentless, elaborate movements, often accompanied by emotionally charged insults or funny phrases."
An overwhelming number of patients had a history of mental health conditions.... Eighty-seven percent of the patients were female, a sex skew that was also found in previous outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness. 
No one knows why girls are more susceptible to this kind of social influence. One theory is that women may seek out belonging more than men do, and may empathize more strongly with others’ suffering. Women also experience higher rates of depression, anxiety and sexual trauma than men. 
At a conference on tic disorders last summer in Lausanne, Switzerland, doctors from several countries shared another observation: A surprising percentage of their patients with the TikTok tics identified as transgender or nonbinary. But without hard data in hand, multiple attendees said, the doctors worried about publicly linking transgender identity and mental illness.... 
Looking at a sample of 35 patients with the TikTok tics, the researchers found that 15 of the adolescents — 43 percent — were transgender or nonbinary, compared with 12 percent of their patients with Tourette’s or with no tics. (An estimated 1.4 percent of the general population of adolescents in the United States identify as transgender.)...

31 comments:

tim in vermont said...

Back in the days before social media, high school teachers used to say “pregnancy is contagious.”

re Pete said...

"Dr. Filth, he keeps his world

Inside of a leather cup

But all his sexless patients

They’re trying to blow it up"

Dave Begley said...

China owns us.

First the $14 trillion covid disaster and now kids want to change genders in large part because of TikTok. At the Nebraska hearing, a trans guy said that $1m had been spent on his transition. He's got infections all the time and has to get expensive hormone treatments.

Chris said...

Gad Sad wrote a great book about this. The Parasitic Mind, You should read it.

rrsafety said...

"The adolescents were overwhelmingly girls, or were transgender or nonbinary"
I think they are mixing up cause and effect. These kids are transgender or nonbinary because of TikTok.

Ice Nine said...

>A surprising percentage of their patients with the TikTok tics identified as transgender or nonbinary. <

GTF outa here! Who might have guessed?!

>But without hard data in hand, multiple attendees said, the doctors worried about publicly linking transgender identity and mental illness....<

And they will, of course, remain so once that very hard data is inevitably amassed.

robother said...

Looks like Jamie Reed's Free Press whistleblowing on transitioning of young girls is having some effect on the MSM. But even the NYT isn't quite ready to expressly ask whether the explosion of Trans identity cases is social contagion. (That's why Althouse had to bold the Trans number.) Time for those woke trans clinics, pharma companies and therapists to lawyer up.

Ann Althouse said...

"But even the NYT isn't quite ready to expressly ask whether the explosion of Trans identity cases is social contagion."

I felt that this article was them saying it without saying it.

Ice Nine said...

>"But even the NYT isn't quite ready to expressly ask whether the explosion of Trans identity cases is social contagion."
I felt that this article was them saying it without saying it.<

That's some hard drivin' journalism, right there.

William said...

I think morbidly obese women have a greater incidence of mental illness than finalists in the Miss America Pageant. If you're morbidly obese or transgendered, you're more likely to have a negative life experience than a beautiful woman.... I think paroled murderers are more likely to engage in violence than police officers and should not be hired to counsel at risk youths....I hold many contrary views that go against enlightened opinion, but I read the NYT so perhaps over time my views will progress.

madAsHell said...

Was it just females??.....or wanna be females?

We used to call this hysteria. Yes, I refuse to read the article. I know it's just rationalizing perceived victims.

cassandra lite said...

Salem taught us nothing about social contagions. We pretend that everything everywhere always is de novo and sui generis.

hombre said...

"The adolescents were overwhelmingly girls, or were transgender or nonbinary — though no one knows why."

"... no one knows why." Really?

Maybe they were less likely to "cowboy up" in the face of stress. Just maybe.

Carol said...

I can't seem to find any of this nuttery in my extended family. Too working-class I guess.

Joe Smith said...

"...illustrating the powerful influence of stress on the body and the resilience of adolescents"

It demonstrates the power of Tik Tok and the power of mass hysteria, which is the primary reason it should be banned.

Jupiter said...

"The adolescents were overwhelmingly girls, or were transgender or nonbinary — though no one knows why."

We expect a certain fraction of girls to be hysterical. What's hard to explain is why so many of the crazy people were crazy people.

Sebastian said...

"The adolescents were overwhelmingly girls, or were transgender or nonbinary — though no one knows why."

Depends on the meaning of why.

But "we" are saying, aren't we, that mentally unstable young people should be able to have sex and get abortions at will, or decide to have their own bodies mutilated irreversibly, as exercises in "agency."

Jupiter said...

"I felt that this article was them saying it without saying it."

Really? How does that work? Do you mean, that they have accidentally revealed it, although they are not aware of it? Or that they wanted to reveal it, without doing so explicitly? The NYT is crazy-Left, to a man, a woman and a dog, but there are gradations of crazy-Left. Some of them are still sufficiently reality-based to understand that identifying as a bird doesn't make it safe for you to jump off of tall buildings.

Jupiter said...

"At the Nebraska hearing, a trans guy said that $1m had been spent on his transition."

Wow! That would not have been possible without Obamacare! He should get a T-Shirt. "Barack got re-elected, my doctors got rich, and all I got was this T-shirt. And my dick cut off."

wildswan said...

Same phenomenon, call it what you like, was behind the Salem Witch trials and Beatlemania. It gets so perfectly adapted to time and place that it looks different each time.

Bob Boyd said...

a trans guy said that $1m had been spent on his transition

Two and a half weather balloons owe their lives to this youngster.

Roger Sweeny said...

Steve Sailer has written that anorexia and bulimia were social contagions of adolescent women in the 1980s. For many puberty was very unsettling and that was a way to cope. (I wonder if it started with all the new attention given to "supermodels" then). Today's gender dysphoria, he hypothesizes, is largely a present day equivalent.

Bob Boyd said...

Despite long knowing about the addictive and destructive nature of their products, holier than thou social media executives have concerned themselves with generating ad revenue and feeling entitled to control elections, censor, propagandize and build a public/private surveillance state.
The kids are carelessly sacrificed on these alters.

IOW, dat muddafuggin' Zukabug, he don't give a shit.

Fred Drinkwater said...

Two days ago NPR had an interview with an "expert" on teen suicide.
- Rates started climbing in the 50s (No numbers given)
- Rates increased significantly in the last decade (No numbers given)
- Not specified if increases were attempts or fatalities, or boys or girls.
- Counselors report patients anxiety about Climate change and pollution (?) as leading stressors.

Of course, no comments about just why those two topics might be prominent as stressors in The last decade. It's just one of those mysteries, you know?

Enigma said...

First, where are their parents? Oh, I see they had their own heads down on Ebay auctions and Facebook updates and gave their kids phones and tablets to keep them quiet. One failed generation and this subculture goes extinct. Transgender genital snips will ensure this outcome.

Second, "No one knows why girls are more susceptible..." BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT. WOMEN HAVE ALWAYS BEEN VULNERABLE TO SOCIALLY INFLUENCED MENTAL DISORDERS. THIS INCLUDES ALL SORTS OF WITCHES AND RELIGIOUS CULTS THROUGHOUT HISTORY.

See the ancient Greek Oracle of Delphi:

https://www.historicmysteries.com/oracle-of-delphi-pythia/

See England's medieval with trials:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/englands-witch-trials-were-lawful-180964514/

See the Massachusetts witches of Salem:

https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/salem-witch-trials

Not news. Ignorant reporter without minimal qualifications. Fire 'em now.

rhhardin said...

Captain Hook's crocodile in Peter Pan had Toc-Toc-Tiks.

rhhardin said...

My impression of Tourettes is that it comes from a different linguistic center than regular language. Fuck and Oh Shit aren't regular utterances.

gilbar said...

Jupiter said...
"At the Nebraska hearing, a trans guy said that $1m had been spent on his transition."
Wow! That would not have been possible without Obamacare!

exactly! If you subsidize something, you get more of it.
Change trans procedures to elective (non insured) and you'll see a return to the 0.001% they were before

Owen said...

Puberty is by definition tough. A child goes in, and with considerable work, help and luck what emerges years later is a possible candidate for adulthood.

Take that inherent and inevitable purgatory and add:
- Moral collapse rampant in a weak libertine culture;
- Technology to mainline TikTok and other virtue-signaling performative digital “reality” so addictive that it makes heroin look like decaf coffee; and
- “Feminist” GRRL Power social contagion that puts the “uterus” back into “hysteria” and vice versa.

And we wonder at the outcome?

China supplies TikTok and its physical analog, fentanyl. Plus Covid. Thanks, guys!

Bitter Clinger said...

Carol: "I can't seem to find any of this nuttery in my extended family. Too working-class I guess."

There is only one example of gender non-conforming in my extended family and she is clearly nuts, almost certainly with some flavor of Cluster B personality disorder. Extreme attention seeking, self-harm, malicious lies about her immediate family, etc. The gender BS is just more extreme attention-seeking.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Oh, my. My husband has a student like this in one of his orchestras. Whenever the music becomes at all difficult they start wildly flailing around -- or, alternatively, freezing up completely. (And yes, I am calling the kid "they," b/c they entered the ninth grade as "Katie" and are leaving senior year as "Aspen." I am not sure whether they are trans or nonbinary, but it's one or the other.)

The latest wrinkle: They announced that they would've quit school by now, but wanted to go to California. (That is, on the eight-day orchestra trip next month.) They aren't interested in performing, understand; Disneyland, OTOH . . .

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the life of a diligent public school teacher in 2023.