Speech therapy is the assessment and treatment of speech disorders. A patient may have speech difficulties that involve articulation, fluency, pronunciation, reading or speech understanding. Other than adults, speech therapy can be of assistance to children, adolescents or the elderly.
A speech therapist will help you overcome or manage your difficulties. Some common areas of speech therapy treatment include acquisition, comprehension, expressive writing, speech recognition, speech communication, intonation, fluency, oral motor, speech perception, speech therapy fundamentals, and articulation problems. In addition, a patient may also need specialized services such as counselling or a combination of therapy and counselling. These services are provided in an in-home environment.
Acquisition therapy addresses the knowledge of skills needed for acquirements. It involves learning how to acquire new material, including verbal and non-verbal cues such as hand gestures, facial expressions, tonality, and register. For example, acquisition speech therapy might include instruction on acquisition skills for phonemic awareness, sentence organization and retrieval.
Comprehension refers to the individual’s ability to understand and apply the information they are given. Individuals with impaired comprehension might include people with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. For individuals with impaired comprehension, speech therapists might provide instruction in reading and language therapy. They will teach the individual to improve their understanding of the materials being presented to them. A loved one with dementia might also benefit from this treatment. The goal of this therapy is to improve the individual’s ability to regulate thoughts and store information.
In expressing thoughts, in speech therapy Adelaide can address expressive language disorders. It may include fluency or problems with vocabulary or sentence construction. It can range from a simple problem with using the hands to a more serious issue where the patient cannot fully control their speech. The goal of this treatment is to improve the individual’s communication to better express thoughts and feelings.
Voice problems can make it difficult to speak and can result in swallowing difficulties. Snoring can be a speech disorder that impacts swallowing and can prevent people from getting quality sleep. One method for improving the patient’s speech is through speech therapy for swallowing in speech therapy Adelaide. This treatment targets the muscles that are used when swallowing, namely the soft palate and uvula. The objective of these techniques is to help individuals control the sounds they make. These speech problems can include hoarseness, difficulty swallowing, throat clearing, and even loud coughing.
Adults may need speech therapy to work on their speech development needs. There are many cases where adults may have problems developing speech, such as fluency issues or poor sentence structure. It is also called stuttering. Sometimes the problem is not speech related but something else, such as swallowing or vocal nodules blocking the airway.
An individual with speech-language pathology, also known as SLP, can help patients work on communication skills. They will help you with communication strategies, teach you how to control your voice, teach you how to speak properly, and provide speech therapy tools and methods to improve your communication. If you have any concerns or worries regarding your speaking abilities, you should see a speech-language pathologist.