- Have you or a family member recently been diagnosed with Tourette’s?
- Is it possible to get effective behavioral treatment for your tics?
- Have you been frustrated with your attempts to control your tics?
- Are you looking for a non-drug treatment for reducing tics?
Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics (CBIT) is a highly structured therapy designed to treat Tourette Syndrome. This is a powerful behavioral technique that has been demonstrated to reduce tic severity. CBIT works by helping children and adults figure out the factors in their environment that make their tics worse and then to teach these individuals how to create environments that are more stable, predictable and easily manageable. Finally, they learn skills to cope with environments that are stressful and tic-challenging.
The first step in CBIT is to teach the client to become more aware of his or her tics and the urge to tic. Next, the client is taught to perform a specific behavior that makes the tic more difficult to do, as soon as the tic or urge appears. This “competing response” helps to reduce, and in some cases, eliminate the tic. When a person applies the right competing response in a calm focused manner, the tic gets better and they feel relieved and more in control.
To sum up, CBIT is a non-drug treatment consisting of three important components:
- Training the client to be more aware of tics
- Making changes to day to day activities in ways that can be helpful in reducing tics
- Training clients to do competing behavior when they feel the urge to tic
