Two-Week Intensive Therapy For Stuttering Uses Team Approach

Helping stutterers stop stuttering is the goal of a new two-week program of intensive therapy.

Patients in the program at Baylor College of Medicine spend at least 70 hours with a team of specialists, including speech therapists, a neurologist, a neurophysiologist and an otolaryngologist. Only two patients are accepted for each two-week session.

"Because of the large amount of time spent in speech therapy, including exposure to professionals from different disciplines, we can monitor their progress closely and give patients plenty of practice speaking," says Dr. David Rosenfield, director of Baylor's Stuttering Center and professor of neurology.

To help patients transfer the skills they develop during the therapy sessions to the real world, Dr. Rosenfield has them practice not only by themselves and in front of speech therapists, but also in restaurants, their hotel and other surroundings in the vicinity, sometimes by themselves and sometimes with therapists.

He compares this treatment program to a music or golf camp that also offers quick learning.

"Stuttering is not a psychological problem - it's a neurological one," he says. "Our goal is to teach the brain to better control the motor system that produces speech."

The speech therapists help patients identify and overcome troublesome words. Patients speak in front of mirrors and listen to recordings of themselves to learn not only what they're doing wrong, but also what they're doing right. Machines that record and print out pictures of sound waves provide patients with visual cues about their speech. The therapists also teach patients how to prolong certain sounds and to control breathing and the movement of the tongue, lips and voice box.

The otolaryngologist views the patient's larynx through a tube inserted through the nose and down the throat to rule out any structural abnormalities that might impact speech. The neurophysiologist places electrodes on the patients to analyze the electrical activity of their brains in the search for clues that could contribute to stuttering. The neurologist can prescribe medications that help patients relax and reduce anxiety when speaking.

"This intensive exposure to a multidisciplinary team is unique," Dr. Rosenfield says. "And it's available to kids as well as adults."

About 4 percent of children and 1 percent of adults stutter. Dr. Rosenfield hopes the new intensive-therapy program will help reduce those percentages.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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