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From: will saunders
Date: 10/7/02
Time: 6:13:29 PM
Remote Name: 65.42.87.72
RESEARCH STUDY: NEW NEUROPHYSICAL AND NEUROQHEMICAL MODEL
As a stutterer and a SpeechLanguage Pathologist who has worked with disfluent children since 1979, I am seeking adult participants searching for a new stuttering intervention program via telemedicine over the internet, with 1 inperson session per month in the Chicagoland area at a convenient group location, i.e. local selfhelp groups.
On two university campuses, Bradley (undergraduate) and SIU (graduate), traditional therapies were so woefully ineffective (especially for a multicultural client) administered by student clinicians and one faculty member, my graduate school threaten to dismiss me from their program 12 months prior to graduation due to silent laryngeal blocks lasting up to 5 minutes. To avert such a disastrous outcome, I realized early on that: 1) one size doesn't fit all (the ASHA leader, 5/02) 2) database on stuttering was incomplete and lacking openended inclusion of information from other scientific and medical specializations 3) abandoned traditional treatments and developed a rudimentary anxietyreduction model.
To pass the understandable fluency standards of a graduate program and to put my model to it's first test, I presented 2 months before graduation a mandatory 10minute lecture with 100% fluency for Dr. Gene Brutten and several peers, thus preventing being expelled.
Numerous Chicago Public School (CPS) educators regular/specialed. teachers, case managers, school psychologists, social workers, nurses, principals had noticed rapid, significant gains in fluency progress with over 50 children, but trying to conduct a research study in schools is almost impossible. Children with moderate to profound disfluencies, to demonstrate the magnitude of effect, are rare and difficult to find. Once found, most school administrators are so disenchanted attempting to locate and keep a SLP proficient in numerous disorders (articulation, language, reading, stuttering etc. especially with multicultural populations) that they refuse to authorize research permission. Some caregivers refuse research permission; others, especially African Americans, so frustrated with ignored complaints about the lack of fluency progress after 35 years with prior SLPs having inadequate fluency training, refuse to comply with any consultations, desperately trying to remediate their children with cultural myths.
Given time and experimentation, I hopefully will be able to modify my copyrighted program for multicultural adult populations. I am sending an audiotape of my preliminary research findings (pre/posttherapy) demonstrating significant improvement with 3 stutters (ages 1719 years old) in one therapeutic high school this past year to different SLPs and researchers. If you know of some SLP who would like an audiotape, or if you have questions about my research study, please email.
Will Saunders, M.S., CCCSLP