Behavior Therapy for Children with Tourette Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial

By J. Piacentini, D. Woods, L. Scahill, S. Wilhelm, A. Peterson, Susanna W. Chang, Golda S. Ginsburg, T. Deckersbach, J. Dziura, Sue L. Levi-Pearl and 1 more. Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 2010

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Context Tourette disorder is a chronic and typically impairing childhood-onset neurological condition. Antipsychotic medications, the first-line treatments for moderate to severe tics, are often associated with adverse effects. Behavioral interventions, although promising, have not been evaluated in large-scale controlled trials. Objective To determine the efficacy of a comprehensive behavioral intervention for reducing tic severity in children and adolescents. Design, Setting, Participants Randomized, observer-blind, controlled trial of 126 youngsters recruited from December, 2004 through May, 2007 and aged 9–17 years with impairing Tourette or chronic tic disorder as primary diagnosis randomized to 8 sessions over 10 weeks of behavior therapy (n=61) or a control treatment consisting of supportive therapy and education (n=65). Responders received 3 monthly treatment booster sessions and were reassessed at 3- and 6-months post-treatment. Intervention Comprehensive behavioral intervention. Main Outcome Measures Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (range 0–40, score >15 indicating clinically significant tics), Clinical Global Impression-Improvement Scale (range 1-very much improved to 8-very much worse). Results Behavioral intervention led to a significantly greater decrease on the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (24.7; CI:23.1,26.3) to 17.1 CI:15.1,19.1) from baseline to endpoint compared to the control treatment (24.6 CI:23.2,26.0) to 21.1 CI:19.2,23.0) (P<.001; 95% CI for difference between groups: 6.2, 2.0); (effect size=0.68). Compared to children in control treatment, significantly more children receiving behavioral intervention were rated as “very much” or “much improved” on the Clinical Global Impression-Improvement scale (52.5% to 18.5%, respectively; P<0.001; number-needed-to-treat=3). Attrition was low (12/126 or 9.5%); tic worsening was reported by 4% of children (5/126). Treatment gains were durable with 87% of available responders to behavior therapy showing continued benefit 6 months post-treatment. Conclusions A comprehensive behavioral intervention, compared with supportive therapy and education, resulted in greater improvement in symptom severity among children with Tourette and chronic tic disorder.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology

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