commentr/StutterFebruary 1, 2021

Content

Oh, that's a great question -- one that people have been asking for millennia - literally. At this point, we do not have a cure for stuttering, but people are looking for ways of helping people who stutter. We we talk about a cure, there are a number of assumptions underlying the question: One is the idea that people who stutter need or want to be cured. Certainly, some/many do, but also some/many do not, as they have found peace with their stuttering and are able top live alongside comfortable. The other is to wonder what a cure would actually look like - does that mean 'typically' or 'normally' fluent speech? Certainly, many people have sought that (and some even claim to have found it), but we know that for the majority of people who stutter, stuttering remains in some fashion. In one sense, that might say that they are not cured, but in another sense, they may no longer be affected by stuttering and might be seen as "cured" in that sense, as they no longer experience a burden. Seth and I just published a paper on "recovery" in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology...showing that different people experience recovery in different and individualized ways. My grandfather, for example, always said that he "used to stutter" even though he still had disrupted speech from time to time. In his mind, he no longer stuttered because it no longer caused a problem for him. In his mind, that was a cure, but to someone else, that might not be. Complicated issue! Thanks for bringing it up.

Themes

Identity & DisabilityTherapy & Professional

Subthemes

Acceptance & PrideCure Claims / Alt-Treats