Speech Therapy

A speech-language pathologist is the healthcare professional educated and trained to evaluate and treat speech, language, and cognitive communication problems as well as swallowing problems. Services are designed to help people develop effective communication skills and restore the highest level of function possible for each individual's communication and swallowing needs.

WHAT DISORDERS DO SPEECH PATHOLOGISTS TREAT?

• Aphasia - problems speaking and understanding, reading writing, telling time, and/or using numbers due to strokes, tumors, or brain injury.
• Apraxia/Dysarthria - difficulty planning muscle movements/weakness or un-coordination of speech muscles making it difficult or impossible to understand.
• Cognitive - Communication disorders - problems of memory, reasoning, problem-solving, attention to task and awareness of surrounding resulting from damage to the brain, head injury, or dementia.
• Dysphagia (swallowing problems) - can lead to dehydration, malnutrition, aspiration pneumonia, isolation and decreased quality of life resulting from stroke, neurological conditions, head and neck cancer, injury or surgery involving the head and neck, dementia, aging process and in some cases the causes are not known.
• Voice disorders - cause changes in pitch, loudness and vocal quality resulting from vocal nodules, polyps, or neurological disease/injury such as in Parkinson's.
• Fluency disorders - often referred to as stuttering.
• Speech Sound disorders - occur often in young children resulting in difficulty producing speech sounds beyond the age one would expect a child to learn it.
• Disorder's causing one to be non-verbal-SLP's assist patients in alternative or augmentative communication methods which may range from sign language, alphabet/picture boards or high-tech electronic devices that produce speech.