What Approaches to Dysphasia Rehabilitation Are Felt to Be Most Effective?

Abstract

Speech pathologists are called upon to rehabilitate adults with disorders which ränge from global dysphasia with severe impairment in all language modalities, to anomic dysphasia with impairment only in substantive word finding. There is little reason to expect that disorders which vary widely in nature should or can be treated in a similar manner. There are, of course, some general principles which can be applied to any rehabilitative process and dysphasia is no exception. Such clinicians as Backus (1937) and Schuell, Jenkins and Jiméniz-Pabón (1964) provide us with general principles of treatment, and these principles are no less appropriate today than when they were written. Few of us would dispute, for example, that speech processes operate with greater facility when the individual experiences a reasonable degree of social adequacy (Backus, 1937), or that the clinician should elicit and not force the response (Schuell, Jenkins and Jiménez-Pabón, 1964). But while such principles may guide us in the treatment process, we must have a specific method in mind when sitting across from the patient.