Regain your communication skills and maximize your quality of life
Speech & Language Therapy
We use many muscles to talk. These include muscles in our face, lips, tongue, and throat, as well as muscles we use for breathing. It is harder to talk when these muscles are weak. Dysarthria happens when you have weak muscles due to brain damage. It is a motor speech disorder and can range from mild to severe.
Dysarthria may accompany other speech and language problems. You might have trouble getting messages from your brain to your muscles to make them move, which is called apraxia. You could also have trouble understanding what others say or verbalizing/expressing your thoughts which is called aphasia. Brain damage causes dysarthria. It can happen at birth or after an illness or injury. Anything that causes brain damage can cause dysarthria, such as:
Stroke (CVA/TIA)
Brain injury (TBI)
Tumors
Parkinson's disease
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
Huntington's disease
Multiple sclerosis (MS)
Muscular dystrophy (MD)
A satisfied client in speech and language therapy.
A SPEECH AND LANGUAGE EVALUATION AND THERAPY IS RECOMMENDED IF YOU OR YOUR LOVED ONE HAS ANY OF THE FOLLOWING SYMPTOMS:
SPEECH (APRAXIA OR DYSARTHRIA)
Reduced overall rate of speech
Sound distortions and distorted substitutions, additions, or complications;
syllable segregation with extended intra- and inter-segmental durations; and
equal stress across adjacent syllables.
Slow overall rate, regardless of accuracy of productions
Difficulty forming words which may be accompanied by audible or silent groping behaviors
Sound and syllable repetitions
Have "slurred" or "mumbled" speech that can be hard to understand
Speak slowly
Talk too fast
Speak softly
Not be able to move your tongue, lips, and jaw as you want
Sound robotic or choppy
Have changes in your voice. You may sound hoarse or breathy. Or, you may sound like you have a stuffy nose or are talking out of your nose.
LANGUAGE (APHASIA)
Difficulty finding words
Speaking in single words or short phrases
Putting words in the wrong order
Substituting sounds or words (“dog” for car; “wishdasher” for dishwasher)
Making up words
Difficulty understanding what is said during communication
Requiring extra time to understand
Difficulty accurately answering yes/no questions
Finding it very hard to follow fast speech or conversation (radio or television show)
Misinterpreting subtleties of language (e.g., taking the literal meaning of figurative speech such as “It's raining cats and dogs.”)
Unaware of errors when speaking
Difficulty writing or copying letters, words and sentences
