Different Types Of Speech Therapies That Can Be Of Help!

A person might be referred to visit a speech therapist or more precisely, a speech language pathologist for a variety of disorders. A speech language therapist can help people having problems related to speech, hearing and swallowing.

If we have to talk more on specific terms, a SLP can help in assessing the problem and treat problems related to:

• Speech: People who face difficulty in forming proper sentences and uttering those sentences in distinct manner.
• Fluency: Ones who tend to stutter and talk in a haphazard manner.
• Language: Who lack the ability and also to comprehend both spoken and written language.
• Voice: Help treat people, who are facing problems with their voice.
• Auditory Habilitation and Auditory Rehabilitation: A speech language therapist would undertake certain recovery techniques related to speech, hearing as well as language disorders.

Now we will take a look at some of the therapies which a SLP would utilize to treat some of the more common speech-language disorders.

• Speech Therapy for Late Talkers: An infant or a toddler should talk after attaining a certain age. If that doesn’t happen, he might be referred to a speech therapist. The therapist would try out different things, like encouraging a child to talk, play certain games with him. At times, he might take away a favourite toy them, till the they ask for it, can motivate small children to speak up.
• Speech Therapy for Kids Having Apraxia: Children who suffer from apraxia face difficulty in saying certain syllables or in making certain sounds. A child would know exactly what she or she wants to say but somehow, they fail to express it correctly. Speech therapists would evaluate children having this problem through several tests, which include:
• Oral-Motor Assessment: This would let a therapist check out weakness of the muscles in the jaw, lips or tongue.
• Melody of Speech Assessment: During this, the therapist would listen to see if they can precisely target syllables and use certain pitch and pauses in between at appropriate places in sentences.
• Speech Sound Assessment: This helps a therapist to further determine how well a child is able to pronounce certain sounds, including vowels, consonants and combinations of sound. It would also include determining how well other people are able to comprehend a child’s conversational speech.
• Speech Therapy for Stuttering: Stuttering is a kind of behavioural problem. Speech therapists would look to teach children, who face this problem, behavioural modification techniques, which in turn would help tackle their problem. A common approach is to control the rate of a child’s speech, as speaking too quickly can make the situation worse. Practising speech at a slower and in a more fluent manner can be extremely helpful.
• Speech Therapy for Aphasia: Aphasia is a condition which causes difficulty in speaking due to some kind of damage to the brain. Some of the speech therapies to help a person get rid of the problem are:
  • Drills, which ensure improvement in specific skills related to language.
  • Group therapy to bring improvements in conversational skills.
  • Gestures and writing to augment their communication skills.