Stammering or Stuttering: Everything You Need To Know

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Chapters

0:00 Introduction
0:54 Causes of Stammering or Stuttering
1:36 Signs and symptoms
2:53 Diagnosis for Stammering or Stuttering
3:05 Treatment


• Stuttering, or stammering, is a speech disorder that is also known as diffluent speech. 
• Stuttering specifically includes the following:
• An uneven rate of speech
• Halted or interrupted speech production, and 
• Repeated words, syllables, and sounds
• Stuttering is a highly common phenomenon, affecting between 5 to 10% of all children. 
• It mostly occurs in children between 2 and 6 years of age. 
• While most children will not carry a stutter beyond childhood, 25% of children who don’t lose their stutter will be affected by it as adults. 
• Intervening early can help a child stop stammering and nullify all chances of them carrying it into adulthood. 
• Let’s take a deeper look into stuttering:
Causes
• The most common causes of stuttering or stammering include:
• Family dynamics
• Neurophysiology 
• Issues in development during childhood
• A family history of stuttering
• Furthermore, injuries and trauma can also result in stuttering. 
• Sustaining an injury to the brain from a stroke can cause stuttering. 
• Similarly, severe emotional trauma can also cause stuttering. 
• Stuttering is believed to run in families as the part of the brain that governs speech and language may be abnormally developed across generations. 
• Children of parents who have stuttered usually stutter as well. 
Signs and Symptoms
• Three different types of stuttering can affect a person. 
• Developmental stuttering occurs while a child is developing their speech. Their mouth may take time to build up their language abilities. 
• The developmental type goes away without treatment. 
• Neurogenic stuttering occurs when there are abnormalities between the brain’s signals and the nerves or muscles of the body. 
• Psychogenic stuttering originates from the brain, specifically the part that regulates speech and learning. 
• The symptoms across all these types are the same, and they include:
• Frustration in trying to communicate
• Occasional refusal to speak 
• Noticeable physical changes in the face, such as facial tics, extensive eye blinking, lip tremors, and increased tension in the upper face area
• Pausing or hesitation when starting to speak
• Interjections or extra sounds while speaking
• A tense voice
• Rearranging words while speaking
• Stretching out words with longer sounds
• Repetition whilst speaking
• Often, children are not aware that they are stuttering and may get used to how they speak. 
Diagnosis
• There is no invasive test to diagnose stuttering. 
• The diagnosis can be made by a speech-language pathologist based on the symptoms exhibited by a person. 
Treatment
• Most stuttering does not require treatment as children grow past the developmental stage and stop stuttering with time. 
• Speech therapy is the most common treatment for other kinds of stuttering. 
• Speech therapy can help with intonation and can also reduce interruptions while speaking. 
• It gives a person the push they need to stop stuttering. It helps increase self-esteem and helps with pronunciation and enunciation. 
• Beyond speech therapy, electronic devices such as voice recorders and hearing aids can also help. 
• The former helps repeat what has been said and learn where the mistakes lie while hearing aids can help reduce background noise and increase focus. 
• Beyond this, no specific medication is known to help with stuttering.