[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 18 Oct 2012
Time: 08:57:33 -0500
Remote Name: 157.182.15.121
Hi Emily, Interesting questions but a bit hard to answer since there a thousands of possibilities. Personally, I did not have access to speech therapy until after my junior year of high school since there were no SLPs anywhere around during my childhood. I finally decided that I wanted help because I was not very successful at managing it on my own. If you look at the percentage of the 3 million stutterers in the USA who are NOT in speech therapy or self help (i.e., the vast majority of these people), then we could conclude that they don't know about therapy, don't want therapy, can't find a suitable SLP for them, are not bothered by stuttering enough to take the plunge to seek speech therapy, etc. We really cannot say. If you would like to take a look at my paper in the Clinical Nuggets section of this conference, "Help Me Help You...", especially the discussion threads, there are some comments that might help you in your presentation. Finally, just as an example of someone who is not happy with therapy, take a look at stutt-l and the short interchange I just had with a person regarding his conclusion that nothing (!) of any value in speech therapy has been advanced in 70 years. Thanks again for your question and good luck in your career, which I hope will be peppered with much success dealing effectively with people who stutter. Ken