Self-Help is Valuable Tool for Stuttering

When Christopher Aubert, age 12, began speech therapy, his clinician recommended participating in the local chapter of the National Stuttering Association (NSA) in addition to his regular speech therapy sessions.  His mother, Martha, credits the self-help group with helping to start his transformation.  “The first few meetings gave him a new perspective on stuttering from hearing the experiences of others,” she said. “He’s made a lot of progress and is gaining self-confidence.”

The NSA uses “self-help” groups, which differ from traditional support groups.  Traditional support groups are run by professionals who help people with a particular disorder, while self-help groups are run by the members themselves in a peer-counseling environment in which the experts are group members.  This group dynamic is especially powerful for people who stutter, who often had never talked with another person who stutterers about stuttering until they attended a self-help group.

Combining therapy with self-help groups helps speech-language pathologists address some of the most difficult aspects of stuttering therapy: the role of counseling; motivating clients to make documentable change in their communication ability; and maintaining change after successfully completing traditional stuttering therapy.

Self-help, when used correctly, does not replace traditional stuttering therapies but serves as a valuable adjunct to traditional therapies in motivating progress, developing healthy attitudes and maintaining long-term change.  Read the full Advance Magazine article here.

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