Speech disorders can have physical or psychological causes, including stuttering, dysarthria, and mutism. Treatment depends on the cause, ranging from therapy to surgery and medication.
Many types of speech disorders have physical or psychological causes. They often involve the exclusion, addition, distortion or replacement of sounds. Some of the most common include stuttering, speech disorder, dysarthria, speech and sound disorders, apraxia, and mutism. Speech-sound disorders are much more common in children than in adults.
Stutterers constantly and involuntarily interrupt their flow of speech, prolong vowel sounds, repeat other sounds, and take unnaturally long pauses. Its cause is unknown, but many stutterers exhibit low self-esteem, nervousness, or an aversion to producing certain speech sounds. The disorder is similar, but is more of a speech impairment than a speech disorder. The person speaks so fast that it is difficult to understand what is being said, transposes sounds and makes mistakes in both grammar and vocabulary.
Lisping is another form of speech impairment. Floss lisping is more common, such as pronouncing the words “sink” and “think” the same way. There is also lateral, or “slushy” lisp, and palatal lisp in which the speaker tries to produce sounds with the tongue on the palate.
Dysarthria is characterized by weakness of the speech muscles. It is often due to damage to the brain or nerves caused by stroke, cerebral palsy or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. In extreme cases, air does not pass the vocal cords, preventing sound formation.
Mutism and abnormal speech patterns can also be caused by neurological disorders. In some cases, the area of the brain that controls speech may be malformed or the speech organs may have developed improperly. Mutism can also be the result of trauma. Many people with autism also don’t speak or display abnormal speech patterns, such as answering “yes” by repeating the question.
There are also many less common speech disorders. Among these are Parkinson’s speech, essential tremor, palilalia, spasmodic hoarseness, selective mutism, and social anxiety. One of the rarest of all speech disorders is dysprosody, or pseudo-foreign dialect syndrome. The speaker with this disorder has difficulty with tone and timing.
Treatment for speech disorders depends on the cause. If it is psychological, the patient should be taught how to overcome the mental state responsible for the disturbance. A speech therapist may be able to help with the problem. If the cause is physical, treatment may involve nerve or brain surgery. In both cases, medicine can be prescribed.
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