The Prof Is In

[ Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]


Re: Code of silence

From: Ed Feuer
Date: 18 Oct 2008
Time: 20:45:39 -0500
Remote Name: 12.104.231.121

Comments

Thank you, Ellen-Marie, for your "statement of appreciation." But I think that what we (the professors and I) have here -- at best -- is a failure to communicate. My view is that those professors who are concerned about the current sad state of affairs in stuttering therapy should be speaking up in various forums including this one. Things won't be fixed until those professionals with integrity are willing to admit publicly and in a forthright manner that there are problem. Take clinic fraud, please. There are variants but clinic room fraud consists basically of the following: It's not too difficult for a practitioner to get a stuttering client relaxed in the clinic room, greatly reducing dysfluencies, while the client is given a "technique" (cha-ching, cha-ching). When the client goes out into the real world, falls flat on his or her face and has the courage to report that to the clinician, he or she is told, "Oh, you're just not working hard enough." While such token therapy might work for persons with a very minimal problem and a high degree of suggestibility, it doesn't work for by far the majority of people who stutter if the goal is long-term efficacy. What is needed in their case includes genuine and thorough in-vivo systematic desensitization, healing and strengthening. Anything less amounts to clinic room fraud. I invite anyone to look at ASHA's Code of Ethics and Scope of Practice to list the various provisions violated by clinic room fraud. To put the needs of the clients first, truth, rather than doing public relations for the profession, must come first. I submit the treatment of stuttering is too big for SLPs, alone. I want SLPs to admit that. And if society ever gets serious about the treatment of stuttering, we will see coordinated multidisciplinary treatment teams. -- edfeuer@mts.net


Last changed: 10/18/08