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From: Kevin O'Neill
Date: 13 Oct 2012
Time: 15:17:56 -0500
Remote Name: 24.18.229.12
Treating anxiety in people who stutter can be tricky. In my experience as a PWS, behavioral therapists have been reticent to talk about stuttering because they aren't trained SLPs and don't understand the problem. Conversely, inexperienced SLPs haven't wanted to go very deep on psychosocial issues. Cross-training and collaboration has a lot of potential to be valuable here. At minimum, SLPs should be trained to do with anxiety and avoidance *as it pertains to the stuttering disorder* (e.g., noting that it may be physiologically harder to speak when anxious, or that cognitive avoidance/resistance patterns impede fluency). Ideally, when general anxiety is present the SLP should refer to a behavioral therapist and collaborate on a treatment plan.