Adults

Adults often wonder whether they are to old to come for therapy. The answer is no, you are never too old to come for therapy.

We will take a look at the following:

Adult Stuttering
Aphasia
Apraxia
Dysarthria
Dysphagia
Voice difficulties

Adult Stuttering

There is a difference between stuttering (more appropriate word is Dysfluency) therapy for adults and children. Adults have a wider emotional range and more life experience which can negatively impact on their speech. Therapy for adult dysfluency sometimes takes longer than expected due to the need to manage the emotional aspects, and not just the speech. Therefore, Speech Therapy is often combined with Psychology to assist in the aforementioned.

Aphasia

Aphasia is caused by brain damage, usually to the language centre of the brain (Broca’s or Wernicke’s area), and is the impairment of the ability to produce and/or understand language.

Apraxia

Apraxia of speech is considered a neurogenic speech disorder resulting in an impairment in the motor planning of speech muscles for the production of speech.

Dysarthria

Dysarthria is seen as a group of motor speech disorders as a result of inadequate muscle tone in the speech mechanism.

Dysphagia

Dysphagia is a swallowing disorder classified by any abnormality in the movement of food from the mouth to the stomach.

Voice difficulties

Voice difficulties can be caused by a number of conditions. Voice difficulties normally manifest audible symptoms such as high vocal pitch, hoarse or breathy voice quality, intermittent or inconsistent phonation or vocal production, to name but a few.