There has been a rise in tics among teenage girls Credit: beyond foto It was in July last year when Rachel’s* daughter started to complain of a light tingling sensation in her spine before beginning to shrug her shoulders repetitively. What ensued over the coming weeks was a rapid acceleration of distressing vocal and motor tics that saw Ellie, 13, hit herself in the face, kick out her legs, shake her head vigorously and spontaneously swear. “We were in a queue for tickets at a theme park and we walked up to the desk and Ellie called the woman, ‘a fat cow’,” recalls Rachel, 43, a nurse from Leeds. “She’d been making these clicking and whistling noises for a while but that was the first time I’d heard her be rude. We were both mortified.”