Anxiety Symptoms Differ in Youth With and Without Tic Disorders

Abstract

We compared anxiety symptoms in youth with and without tic disorders by comparing scores on the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC) in youth with tic disorders to those in a concurrent community control group and in a group of treatment-seeking anxious youth from the Child/Adolescent Anxiety Multimodal Study (CAMS). Data from 176 youth with tic disorders, 93 control subjects, and 488 CAMS participants were included. Compared to youth with tic disorders, controls had lower total MASC scores (p < 0.0001) and CAMS participants had similar total MASC scores (p = 0.13). Separation Anxiety (p = 0.0003) and Physical Symptom (p < 0.0001) subscale scores were higher in youth with tic disorders than in CAMS participants. We conclude that the anxiety symptom profile differs in youth with and without tic disorders, which may have important implications for targeting treatment of anxiety in youth with tic disorders.

Keywords: Anxiety; Separation anxiety; Tics; Tourette.

Fig. 1

Youth with tic disorders had higher MASC total scores than community control youth and similar MASC total scores to those of treatment-seeking anxious youth in the CAMS trial. The box represents the interquartile range and the horizontal line inside the box represents the median. The whiskers represent minimum and maximum scores, excluding outliers (black dot). C community control subjects, TD Tic disorder subjects, CAMS CAMS trial participants

Fig. 2

Tic severity was associated with physical anxiety symptoms (r = 0.30 p < 0.0001)