Speech Therapy

IT is only during recent years that speech therapy has become known, although for many years the treatment of speech disorders has been carried out by persons interested in the subject, and it is they who have laid the foundations of and built up what is now a recognised profession. Very often the work of an elocutionist is confused with that of a speech therapist, but there is little similarity between the two. Certainly both deal with speech, but whereas the elocutionist seeks to improve and beautify normal speech, the work of the therapist is confined to treating defective speech in order that it may become normal. In short, the therapist leaves off where the elocutionist begins. Apart from this, the personalities required in both types of work are totally different; that of the elocutionist must be evident, while that of the therapist must be sunk, in the interest of her patient. The objectives of speech therapy are primarily to make defective speech normal and intelligible to others, and secondarily to make it easy for the patient, so that it is with these objectives in mind that the therapist works. Both children and adults are treated, and each patient is recognised as an individual, having individual problems and requiring individual attention. The types of cases treatable by speech therapy are as follows Stammering, lalling, aphonia and dysphonia. Cleft palate, tongue tie, lisping, nasality due to adenoids or paralysed palate. Motor and sensory aphasias. Alexia and agraphia. Speech defects resulting from Mental retardation (very little can be done if the intelligence is very low). Abiotrophies of the motor speech centre. Localised cerebral agenesis. Chorea. Post encephalitis lethargica. Bulbar weakness but not bulpar palsy. The percentage of speech defects in school children is five per cent., one per cent. being comprised of stammerers. Before attempting to give the causes, prognosis and treatment of the more usual of these speech defects, I should like to give you the general principle on which treatment of all defects is based. Speech is an outlet for the emotions, and if this outlet is blocked, as it is when a speech disorder arises, the result is serious. The feeling of frustration which the patient experiences when his words will not flow freely or cannot be understood by others, must at times be almost overpowering. Then there comes to the patient a realisation of the difference between his …