The fear of speaking

It is embarrassing for those affected, especially when, as in most cases, it occurs in stressful situations: stuttering. This speech disorder is unjustifiably often associated with stupidity and the affected people laughed at. Professional help from a therapist is needed here.

About 800,000 people (about 1% of the population) are affected by this phenomenon. The Bundesvereinigung Stotterer-Selbsthilfe tries to help those affected to deal with their problem. However, the causes of stuttering are still a mystery. One of the most famous people with this speech disorder was the English King George VI. In this context, it is worth watching Tom Hooper's 2010 film The King's Speech: It vividly depicts the development of the English head of state from an uncertain stutterer to a capable head of state.

Root cause analysis

The speech disorder generally begins at the age of 3 - 4 years. Studies show that about three quarters of those affected by stuttering began with it before the age of 6. Today's researchers no longer attach great importance to the theory that stuttering is primarily psychological. Problems in the social environment could be the concrete trigger, but not the core of the problem, says scientist Jürgen Kohler. Kohler is a lecturer at the School of Curative Education in Zurich. Neurophysiological research provides a new starting point for research into the causes of this problem: affected individuals have three specific genetic mutations that could be responsible for the speech disorder. In addition, neurologists found another abnormality: stutterers have above-average activity in the right hemisphere of the brain. Experiments using doping of the test subjects have led to astonishing results: For this purpose, a test person is made artificially deaf to his or her own speech sound by means of headphones. During the test, they were able to speak normally. This suggests that speech control is responsible for this anomaly.

Treatment

One aspect important for the whole treatment: patience. Therapies that learn to avoid stuttering can last up to three months. But even after the treatment has been completed, those affected must continue to work on themselves. During the treatment phase, the patients learn to accustom themselves to a different way of speaking; it is not possible to stop stuttering. Fast reaction has the highest priority: Especially through discrimination of others, for example at school or at work, active and open people can become silent loners in the long run. This is where an early start must be made so that those affected lose their fear of stuttering. The loss of fear of communicating with others creates a completely new attitude to life - as many former patients can report from their own experience.

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