Where does the name Afasic come from?
When Afasic was set up in 1968, it was called The Association for all Speech-Impaired Children, or A.F.A.S.I.C for short. The acronym seemed particularly apposite because children with speech and language impairments were at that time often described as being aphasic or having aphasia (or dysphasia). The term aphasia is derived from Greek and means ‘lacking speech’ or, in the case of dysphasia, ‘lacking proper speech’. The terms aphasic and dysphasic were first, and are still, used to describe people who have impaired speech and language as a result of an illness such as a stroke or accident involving severe head injury. The same terms were then also used to describe children with developmental speech and language impairments, whose speech in many ways resembled that of people with acquired dysphasia. Nowadays, most practitioners make a clear distinction between people with a developmental (innate) disorder, and those whose impairment is acquired. Generally, the term ‘speech and langua
