Volunteering…just doing my bit for Stroke and Aphasia

Hello again,

I hope you’re all well and I hope this awful British weather isn’t getting you down.

Last time I did a very long blog about getting into the mind-set of a speech therapist, in which I discussed some of the disorders/impairments that form part of a speech and language therapist’s caseload. I thought today I would talk about my experiences at my volunteering and how some of the people I work with have adjusted to life with aphasia, regained control of their lives and have now continued with their career/hobbies.

My time volunteering is split two ways. On Wednesdays I visit David (not his real name of course) at his home. David is a 71-year-old man who suffered a stroke back in the summer. I usually see him for about an hour where we talk, and it is a time for David to practice his speaking in a comfortable environment and to help build his confidence with talking. On Fridays, I help out with the Camden Stroke Group. The Stroke Association run a group on Friday mornings where people who have suffered a stroke can go and socialise with others and us volunteers help support the group. One of the aims of the group is to increase social support and help people build a new network. This is because many people who have had a stroke may find it difficult to maintain friendships and therefore lose their friends and become more isolated after the stroke.  This group is an opportunity for people to come and make friends and socialise. Dr. Katerina Hilari, a researcher at City University London has written many articles about social support networks and one of her articles looks at Stroke Social Network. To see what she found click here. 

Many people in the group have some form of Aphasia. For those of you who have forgotten what Aphasia is, it is a language impairment that many people who have had a stroke, suffer from. It affects their ability to read, write and speak.  Due to their Aphasia, many group members, especially men, prefer not to talk and prefer to keep to themselves.  I often notice that compared to the women who are still more willing to talk, the men prefer to read their newspapers.

I think sometimes when we hear of stroke we think everyone has the same thing when actually a stroke comes in all shapes and forms.  Strokes vary in severity from person to person. For example, like I said David who I see on Wednesdays suffered a mild stroke back in the summer and is walking and talking independently. He tells me he does have some difficulty with finding his words. However to me, he appears to be perfectly understandable. The last time I visited him, he told me he was happy with our visits and that it was helping his speaking which other people he spoke to, noticed as well. He told me that he feels he has made a lot of progress, which is very encouraging.

A few of the members of the Friday group used to have very interesting careers/hobbies. Two of the women used to be singers. One sings operatic music and the other classical. One of the men used to be a photographer for a living. Now, many years after they first had their stroke, they have all managed to regain the ability to work. What I find fascinating is that despite their aphasia, both women sing so well and remember their lyrics.

The last person in the group I wanted to tell you about was Tony (not his real name) the photographer. With his permission of course I asked if I could tell you all about him. So Tony suffered a stroke many years ago, I can’t remember exactly when but it’s been at least five years or more. Before his stroke, Tony was a professional photographer. His work has been featured in galleries and even postcards. After suffering his stroke, Tony was left unable to carry on working, as the right side of his body was impaired. He had to learn to write with his left hand and take pictures with his left hand. However, slowly following his stroke he was able to take up his photography once more. Recently Tony’s work has been featured in an art exhibition. Before his Stroke he mainly took photographs of his family and his hometown of Derry, Ireland. So last Friday, as I sat down to talk to Tony he put a newspaper clipping in front of me and when I looked at it, it was about himself. The article discussed people in the neighbourhood who had done some inspiring things.  

Tony was in the newspaper because his pictures were featured in an art exhibition called “Communicating without words” in London. Tony’s series of photographs shows a fellow stroke survivor and actor displaying various emotions and feelings. The photographs highlight the importance of total communication and how for some, they need to compensate for the loss of speech through other means of communication. For Tony after his stroke he turned to photography to communicate. I’ve talked about it before but I really do believe that gesturing is so important for people who have no other ways of communicating. Because if you think about it, even when we do use speech, many of us combine this with gestures too. How many of you have nodded whilst saying yes or shook your head saying no? A team of researchers at City, where I study, led by Professor Jane Marshall, has looked at gesture therapy for people with aphasia after stroke. Click here to see what they found.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed hearing about my volunteering. For anyone looking to volunteer there are many organisations that need volunteers so why not look up some volunteering opportunities. It doesn’t have to be here in the UK, there are summer projects abroad too.

Bye for now,

H x

Into the mind of a Speech Therapist

Welcome back,

So today I am going to talk to you a little about what it is we speech and language therapists (SLTs) do.

Usually, the reality of telling someone you are a speech therapist welcomes the notion of surprise combined with discomfort at not knowing what it is we do. If I had a penny for every time a person said 'oh ok,' or 'that’s interesting,' for when I told them I was an SLT, lets just say I think I could open up my own practice. No but seriously, today I thought I would talk very briefly on four disorders/impairments that we help assess and manage. I'll also put up a little background reading in the form of FREE journal papers for anyone interested or looking to find a little more about what we do.   

So first let me talk to you about disorders/problems that young children may face. First off, we have language impairment (LI). As the name states, this is when a child’s language is impaired. A child who has a language impairment may have delayed or disordered language. A delay implies that language is developing along normal lines albeit doing so at a slower rate or with a later start, whereas a disorder is used to imply some deviance from the normal pattern of development. If a child has a language impairment it may not necessarily be their primary problem. For example a child with a language impairment could also have hearing problems or autism. Previous research has shown that school-aged children with LI experience higher risk of social and emotional difficulties. There is limited provision for older teenagers and young adults and little focus on community support for this group. A team of researchers at City University London looked at specialist youth groups for young people with LI. They reported the experiences and views of 19 young people aged 13-23 attending a leisure provision for young people with communication difficulties. Take a look here at what they found.

Secondly, apart from Language Impairment, there is also Specific Language Impairment (SLI). It has been defined as the failure of language ‘to follow a normal developmental course for no apparent reason’. The difference between SLI and LI is that the primary problem is specific to language only when the child is otherwise developmentally normal. Some indicative features of SLI are having difficulty with verbs and word finding difficulties. Due to its nature, researchers have been interested to find out whether children with SLI have difficulties with memory and other cognitive abilities. Dr. Nicola Botting and colleagues researched cognitive abilities in children with specific language impairment. They looked to identify whether children with SLI demonstrated difficulties with visuo- spatial memory as well as verbal short-term memory and to see whether a visuo-spatial processing task without short-term memory requirements was problematic for children with SLI. Click here to see the results.

What is visuo-spatial processing you ask? Click here for more info 

Furthermore, the ability to hear as a child determines how well you can pick up language. For those who are born deaf, if their parents are also deaf and use British Sign Language (BSL), then they will pick up language naturally and easily, just like hearing children pick up spoken language. Yet, this is not the case for most deaf children as the majority of them are born to hearing parents. As a result, their language and communication may be delayed. Some children are not born totally deaf but with mild to moderate hearing loss as a result of recurring infections e.g. glue ear. There is a lot of interest on sign language acquisition among native signers (whose first language is sign language): how does it compare with language acquisition of hearing children exposed to a spoken language in terms of ages and stages of development? One such study undertaken by Dr Ros Herman and colleagues looked at ‘Early Vocabulary Development in Deaf Native Signers.’ Click here to read the article.

Glue ear I hear you say.. 

Many deaf children can also have other concomitant disorders such as developmental delay. They may also have language impairment. A study undertaken by Kathryn Mason and colleagues looked at identifying language impairment in deaf children acquiring British Sign Language. Mason found that the children in her study had significant language delay compared to their peers matched for age and language experience. Click here to read more about this.

As speech therapists we don’t just work with children, there are many adults out there who have acquired problems in their life. One such example is a Stroke. A stroke happens when the blood supply to parts of the brain is cut off and brain cells are damaged or die. This can be from a blood clot or a burst vessel. About a third of people who have a stroke make a significant recovery within a month. But most stroke survivors will have long-term problems. Strokes can vary in terms of severity. About one third of people who have suffered a stroke will get Aphasia. This is a condition that leads to problems understanding and using language. Sadly many people who have had a stroke and have lost their ability to communicate verbally, also lose their friends. Losing friends, having few social contacts and loneliness are linked to depression post-stroke.  It is therefore important to look at what happens to social contacts post-stroke. At City, Dr. Katerina Hilari, a leading researcher into the impact of aphasia and her colleague Sarah Northcott developed a test called Stroke Social Network Scale. Clinicians and rehabilitation professionals can use this test to look at what happens to people’s social contacts after a stroke. Have a look at what they found here.

Aphasia…Sarah Scott was 18 years old when she suffered a stroke. Here she discusses what happened on the BBC 

Some people with aphasia who have trouble speaking may need to use various strategies, such as pointing and gesture to help them get their message across. Professor Jane Marshall and her colleagues at City investigated gesture and naming therapy for people with severe aphasia. They looked at a group of people with severe aphasia and compared their learning of gestures with their learning of words. They found that across the group, improvements in naming were greater than improvements in gesture. For more information about what they did, click here.

Anyway, this is just a flavor of some of the exciting research that takes place at City University London where I study! I know that’s a lot of information to handle, so I'll leave it there for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this blog and learned something new.

Ciao,

H x