Loading Docs 2022 - Believing is Seeing

Is it all in your head? No: the symptoms are as real as any condition out there. People are suffering.

– Sociologist Robert E Bartholomew, in this documentary

The worst thing about sharing my videos would probably just be the people who would tell me that I’m faking it.

– Bella Maxwell on sharing her experience with tics online, late in this documentary

The outbreak of the ‘TikTok-Tics’ happened during the pandemic. Coincidence? I don’t think so, because there was so much free-floating anxiety around at the time.

– Sociologist Robert E Bartholomew

Bella Maxwell, 18, started experiencing tics for the first time in June 2020, just before her 16th birthday. Doctors concluded the most likely explanation they started was due to stress and anxiety. She's not alone in her experience, neurologists globally have reported seeing an increase in tic-like disorders in adolescent women during the pandemic.

– Stuff writer Hannah Martin on the documentary, Stuff article 13 November 2022

Over the past three years, I’ve seen a four-fold increase in the number of children who present with tic-like disorder. They’re somewhat different from traditional tic-disorder children. It tends to be an older individual, often an adolescent. There is a female predominance.

– Paediatric neurologist Rakesh Patel, in this documentary

I’ve spent the last 35 years studying outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness. That's when people in a group start feeling sick at the same time, even though there's no physical or environmental reason for them to be sick. Think of it as the placebo affect in reverse. If you believe that something is making you ill, you can become ill.

– Sociologist Robert E Bartholomew