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From: John Paskievich
Date: 17 Oct 2006
Time: 16:47:41 -0500
Remote Name: 24.66.94.140
Ed As previously stated, I think that a multidisciplinary approach to the treatment stuttering has much to recommed it. Stuttering is so much more than a speech problem. It can negatively effect every aspect of a person's life from friendships and romance ti schooling and employment. Many stutterers lead circumscribed lives, fail to develop proper inter-personal skills and settle for second or third best. I believe that therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be a vital component of speech therapy for stuttering. I feel that stutterers are traumatized in the the full medical sense of the term, as traumatized as car crash victims or war survivers, perhaps even more so because stutterers are continuously forced back into traumatic situations whenever they must speak. It's more than interesting to know that up to one third of stutterers have experienced out of body experiences, a major symptom of trauma. Van Riper as a psychologist and stutterer knew how traumatic stuttering could be and that is why he placed such an emphasis on systematic desensitization and why he wanted, as you point out, to attack stuttering "from every quarter and with every single weapon." But the practical question remains; who will fund these weapons of mass destruction of stuttering when stuttering remains only a blip on the health care radar screen. _John Paskievich