Can Speech Therapy Help With Stammering?

Stammering or stuttering is a speech disorder resulting in discontinuity in the pace and rhythm of the speech. Stammering usually results from such physiological factors as neuromuscular problems, obstruction in the speech organs, difficulty in moving your lips and tongue, inability to control the muscles that are vital to speech. Difficulty in pronouncing a word, repetition of a word or emphasizing on a particular word for a long time, often followed by certain signs such as shaking of lips, rapid blinking of eye- these are the usual signs of stammering.

Although more common among children at an early age, stammering can affect people of all age groups. The most common and effective treatment suggested by doctors and healthcare professionals to help reduce stammering is speech therapy.

Speech therapy requires time and patience. You will need to sit with your speech specialist for multiple sessions, say twice or thrice a week. Each of the therapy sessions takes about 2-4 hours. The time period and amount of stammering therapy needed vary from one person to another, depending on how much progress you make. During a speech therapy session, your doctor will teach you the following-

1. Speak slowly and with enunciation. Try pronouncing single-syllable words at a time. Make an effort to have each word pronounced properly before you move on to the next one.
2. Use simple and short sentences to communicate. Talking in simple language helps reduce pressure on the person affected with this condition, and boosts his/her confidence.
3. Understand that it’s okay to leave a pause in a conversation. Don’t rush into completing a sentence. If you’re around someone who’s struggling with their words, don’t complete their sentence.
4. During the session your therapist will have you read out a passage from a book or magazine to monitor your speech. Practice-reading improves your fluency and helps you come out of the embarrassment and fear of stammering.
5. Speaking in a quick manner can affect the amount of stammering in a conversation, while slowing down the pace can help you pronounce the words in a more controlled way.

For those who have been handicapped with this speech disorder since many years, it may take much longer time to get rid of the negative feelings associated with stammering, but there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Speech therapy is a simple yet effective treatment to overcome stammering in the long run.