What kinds of patients and problems does speech therapy treat?
There are four kinds of problems that speech therapy can treat. • speech • language • cognition, or thinking skills • swallowing A person with speech problems has difficulty producing sounds so that others can understand him or her. Examples of speech problems include stuttering, a lisp, garbled speech after a stroke, or loss of the voice box, or larynx, after a laryngectomy. Language is the use of symbols, such as words, numbers, or gestures, that have meaning. A person may have trouble understanding or accurately choosing words or numbers or gestures. The third kind of problem is cognition, or thinking skills. In order to communicate accurately with others, a person must be able to pay attention, concentrate, and use various thinking skills. In order to treat certain language problems, the speech therapist may need to work on these thinking skills. The fourth kind of problem is swallowing difficulties. A person may have difficulty controlling the tongue and safely swallowing food or
