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From: Anelise Bohnen
Date: 20 Oct 2011
Time: 15:52:16 -0500
Remote Name: 187.36.5.23
Dear Lindsay In Brazil we still have a small group of people dealing seriously with stuttering. At The Brazilian Fluency Institute (www.gagueira.org.br) we basically agree that stuttering is a neurobiological disorder that affects the language area of the brain. My results caused some impact in those who think that stuttering is caused by some psychological problem. When they learn that stuttering ruptures fluency, that fluency is required for a good language use, and that some people who stutter may have psychosocial consequences, it changes the whole picture: SLPs are more interested in studying stuttering because understood that it is within their professional role, pediatricians are asking less and less to parents "to wait because it goes away", and parents are taking actions about treatment earlier. But, yes, it will take some time until public policy makers will understand that, by affecting 1% of the population, stuttering is a public health problem to be looked into more carefully. My research is just one of the contributions to the field. I analyzed words stuttered only by PWS for a period of 20 years. The regularity was impressive. If you want to see the statistics, please send an email to: ajbohnen@uol.com.br Thank you so much for your question.