Evolving nonstandard tic treatment approaches

Tourette’s disorder is a childhood-onset, neuropsychiatric disorder with a prevalence of approximately 1%. For decades, behavioral and pharmacological approaches have remained the same for Tourette’s disorder. Comprehensive behavioral intervention for tics (CBIT), the gold-standard behavioral treatment, can be very effective, yet it is often very challenging to find a well-trained treater. Our stronger pharmacological treatment options (ie, antipsychotics) can help reduce tics, but they are not infrequently associated with intolerable side effects. While we await results from the new, promising dopamine D1-blocking pharmacologic agent, ecopipam, our objective in this talk is to review the safety and efficacy of various nontraditional behavioral, medicinal, and neuromodulatory treatment options for Tourette’s disorder symptoms.