Abstract
A 26-year-old single female suffering from Tourette Syndrome received various therapeutic tests in the past including one week of pharmachotherapy in our hospital, all of which were in vain. After this we applied behavior therapy and noticed a prominent decrease in the frequency of multiple tics. We would therefore like to report on this therapeutic process. We adopted negative-practice, habit-reversal and self-monitoring as the main techniques of behavior therapy in this case. According to these techniques the frequency of the patient's tics at the end of the therapy had decreased by 1/19 compared with the frequency at the time the pharmachotherapy was applied, and even now that lower frequency is being maintained. Although the two former techniques of behavior therapy give the impression of being opposite as far as their applicaton is concerned, the pattern of the paient's symptoms resembled that of the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Due to this, negative-practice and habit-reversal could be useful also for the relief of tension suffered by the patient which is based on conflict. At the present time the patient is more or less relieved from obstacles in everyday life. However even now she is not approaching full recovery from the tics and because a temporary, slight increase in the frequency of the tics was noticed due to an accidental interruption in the routine of drug taking, it was suggested that the patient therefore had a functional disorder in the Dopamine (DA) system in her brain, and therefore this resulted in the prevention of an uppermoderate improvement by bahavior therapy. In the report on the therapeutic process we would like to try to analyse the varying effects of the therapeutic variables.
