Stuttering in general
What characterizes a reputable stuttering therapy?
Dealing with stuttering
Generally speaking, stuttering cannot and should not be ignored. However, many people are unsure how to react to stuttering and how to deal with people who stutter. Often they give well-intentioned „help“, such as:
- Ending words and sentences
- Breaking eye contact
- Advice such as „speak slowly“
However, for most people who stutter, this leads to increased tension, anger, insecurity, or helplessness, which reinforces the stuttering. For example, if a child becomes convinced that his or her speech is funny and difficult because of negative or embarrassed reactions to his or her stuttering, he or she builds up speaking pressure. It becomes insecure and loses the desire to speak, which as a consequence can lead to the reinforcement of stuttering and to the avoidance of speech-difficult situations.
Many affected persons also find the tabooing of stuttering disadvantageous. Often it is helpful for both conversation partners if stuttering is discussed (if there is an appropriate relationship between them) and the person who stutters can explain what behavior they would like to see regarding their stuttering. Accepting listener reactions to stuttering, such as patience, showing understanding, not laughing, letting the person finish and maintaining eye contact often already help to make a communicative situation pleasant for both conversation partners.
What characterisctics does a reputable stuttering therapy need?
The main goal is to find the right therapy, a therapy that fits the needs of the person affected. Any therapy that promises the freedom from symptoms in the shortest possible amount of time should be viewed extremely critically. Spontaneous, but short-term, freedom from symptoms is not uncommon, but has nothing to do with „healing“ as such, a reputable therapy concept and is due to other factors.
Characteristics of a serious stuttering therapy are:
- no promises of a cure
- a therapy according to a proven, effective concept
- accompanied transfer of what has been learned into everyday life, through in-vivo training
- Involvement of parents or relatives and contact persons, the personal environment
- Structured aftercare
- Continuous monitoring of success
Stuttering and Speech therapy
Speech therapy treats all areas of speech, language, voice and swallowing disorders, therefore stuttering as well. In addition to diagnosis and therapy of communication disorders, the main fields of work include prevention and counselling of patients and their relatives or contact persons.
For the area of stuttering, there are different therapy approaches that are individually selected depending on the age. It is important that the therapy is based on a specific concept for stuttering and that the therapist is qualified in this field (non-specific methods have not been proven to be effective).
Methods that have been proven to be effective are
- Palin approach
- Lidcombe programme
- Stuttering modification (e.g. KIDS or van Riper therapy)
- Speech restructuring (e.g. soft speech or fluency shaping)
Approaches considered ineffective:
- Hypnosis
- Breathing therapy
- Non-specific logopaedic approaches (e.g. only playing, rhythmic speaking or tapping, finger-eighting)
As a rule, treatments take place once a week in logopaedic practices, but the important intensive work is often not possible for organisational reasons. Unfortunately, this approach often leads to the fact that many months or even years are needed to see even small therapy successes.
Working in groups is also often difficult to implement in outpatient practices. But from a professional point of view the exchange and treatment in groups is considered much more effective than pure individual therapies.
Which therapy is the right one for a certain person, this depends on many factors and must always be considered individually. If you are interested in an intensive therapy in a group according to the speech restructuring approach, please contact us. We will then clarify everything else with you in a personal conversation.
Do you have any questions about stuttering or our therapy concept?
Get in touch with our experienced speech therapists during our consultation hours.
Do you have any questions about stuttering or our therapy concept?
Get in touch with our experienced speech therapists during our consultation hours.