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From: Laurie Fischer
Date: 17 Oct 2006
Time: 14:22:15 -0500
Remote Name: 68.173.42.171
Dear Mr. Sugarman, I thought your article was very interesting and thought provoking. I am currently a student at New York University, working towards my Masters degree in Speech-Language Pathology and am consequently very interested in learning about techniques for effective treatment. I am hoping you can answer some questions for me. Specifically, I wanted to know if researchers had gathered empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of utilizing the stages of change principles for treatment of individuals who stutter. If so, are their studies you could direct me to? It would be interesting to know how long, on average, each stage requires before a client is ready to move to the next stage. This knowledge might help the clinician project how long each course of treatment will take and to provide stage-appropriate interventions. It would also be interesting to find out if conventional fluency disorder treatment programs have benefited from integrating the stages of change theory. My concern with implementing this theory is that it appears that fluency is the goal of treatment rather than the client’s ability to speak effectively without struggle, avoidance, shame and/or embarrassment. Do we run the risk of telling our clients that fluency is attainable (when fluency may never be attained by some) and—implicit in this thought—that stuttering is ‘bad’? Thank you, Laurie Fischer