Speech and language disorders may affect anyone and might pose a threat to the general health of a person. However, these disorders become all the more difficult to cope up with if it happens after a person has been hit by some severe stroke. Stroke is a medical condition that affects the brain when there is a poor blood flow to it, hence resulting in cell death. Stroke is quite a common phenomenon these days, and it affects speech and language problems in most of the cases. Hence, the affected person faces various speech disorders, and if it is given immediate attention, then a majority of the speech disorder cases that occurred after a stroke, can be treated appropriately.
The you are suffering from Aphasia, a type of language disorder that commonly occurs to people who have suffered a stroke, then immediately seek for a good speech therapy after stroke services from a certified Speech Language Pathologist. Aphasia is a result of brain damage, in which the affected person faces difficulties in expressing himself/herself while speaking. Other symptoms include difficulty understanding speech and language, and difficulty in reading and writing, indicating that the person is suffering from a loss of communication skills.
It is a good news that almost a full recovery from Aphasia is made possible by Speech Language Pathologists who offer quality speech therapy after stroke services. In these therapies, special activities and exercises are taught, such as –
- Playing with word games, like crossword puzzles
- Reading or singing aloud
- Reading the newspaper daily
- Read books or watch movies which are specially released for Aphasia patients
- Practise writing brief letters or greeting cards to friends or making a shopping list
- Cooking a new recipe by reading the methods
- Use the internet to communicate with various people on social media, and creating a personal Web page is a very good idea
Stroke occurs when there is an interruption in the normal flow of blood to the brain. After performing the above activities necessary for speech therapy after stroke treatment, as suggested by a certified Speech Language Pathologist, a secondary area responsible for speech and language is developed in the brain.
Some common speech therapy after stroke treatments include the following –
- Intonation therapy in which the Aphasia patient is asked to sing words which he/she is unable to speak.
- Visual speech perception therapy involves the association of photos with words, hence making it easier for the stroke victim to remember things by relating between the two. It improves the communication and recalling skills of the patient.
- Art therapy is a kind of psychotherapy that focuses on making art as a method of communicating and expressing oneself. In this therapy speech therapy after stroke professionals make the Aphasia patient draw something, and then the therapist analyses his/her symbolic self-expression techniques as communicated through art.
- Constraint-induced language therapy involves creating restrictions for the patient in the method of communication, and is designed in such a way so that the patient is left with no other choice but to communicate verbally. All other types of communication like gestures and other body language forms, writing, pictorial representations are simply not possible.
- Group psychotherapy or simply group therapy focuses on communications, mainly verbal, which are done in groups. No one-to-one communication is allowed, as the speech therapy after stroke therapist treats several Aphasia patients together in a small group.
Aphasia patients should always keep in mind that they need to calm down and relax a bit, which will make their life a lot easier. They should not take any stress or pressure, nor should his family members create any stressful environments around the patient. Speech therapy after stroke treatments done by even the topmost therapists will fail, if the Aphasia patient is living in an aggravating environment.