Tourette's Syndrome Case Study

Tim Howard and His Fight Against Tourette's Syndrome There are 200,000 people in the world that have the most severe kind of Tourette's syndrome. Tim Howard is a goalie for the United States National Soccer Team. He has played in many other international clubs. He has the mild version of Tourette's syndrome. Tourette's syndrome is a genetic disease, however it is also connected to the environment. There are many physical symptoms for Tourette’s syndrome. They include, swearing uncontrollably, involuntary muscle movements, people freezing in sudden positions, vocal spasms, uncontrollable sneezing, spitting, grunting, clearing the throat, and tics. Swearing uncontrollably occurs when the patient starts cursing randomly for no apparent reason, …show more content…
The first physical limitation of Tim's Tourette's was having to touch someone before he could speak to them.The second physical limitation was that the tics, grunting,sneezing, would not happen when he did something he liked or enjoyed a lot. The third physical limitation was that he could not focus on anything the teacher said or instructed(Benjamin 16).The fourth limitation was that he had to touch everything or pick it up. Even though he knew humanity was not in his hands, Tim still did all of these actions because he still felt humanity would end if he did not(22). If he tried to resist the urge he would not be able to move or do anything until he touched it. Everything had to be touched in a specific order if he did not follow this ritual, he could not do anything. He also had lots of anxiety for nothing in particular. An example of this would be to play a basketball game with brother, he would still get anxiety. The societal limitations on Tim was that he always felt like someone was watching and going to make fun of his tics(42). The mental limitations were development and learning. His tics caused him to lag and not pay attention, and always had to move or escape from small places. He was late on his early childhood development

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