Speech-language therapy can help people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) improve their abilities to communicate and interact with others.

Verbal Skills

This type of therapy can help some people improve their spoken or verbal skills, such as:

• Correctly naming people and things
• Better explaining feelings and emotions
• Using words and sentences better
• Improving the rate and rhythm of speech

Nonverbal Communication

Speech-language therapy can also teach nonverbal communication skills, such as:

• Using hand signals or sign language
• Using picture symbols to communicate (Picture Exchange Communication System)

Speech-language therapy activities can also include ways to improve social skills and social behaviors. For example, a child might learn how to make eye contact or to stand at a comfortable distance from another person. These skills make it a little easier to interact with others.

Joe Lukong had a simple question. The answer he got would change his life.

What Joe wanted to know was, why did he and so many members of his large, extended west African family all stutter? Siblings, aunts, uncles, nephews, cousins: the list went on and on. "Is it possible there could be a genetic link?" he wondered.

As it turned out, there definitely was a link.

The genetic information gathered from Joe’s family allowed NIH researchers to discover another gene linked to stuttering.

Searching for answers

It was 2002, when Joe, then 37, was living in a small rural town in the African country of Cameroon.

He wanted to find out more about his stuttering condition—and find answers for his family. So he decided to participate in an online research symposium where stuttering experts offered to answer people’s questions about the disorder.

When one of the experts saw Joe’s question about his family, they forwarded it to Dennis Drayna, Ph.D., at NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

The fourth gene

Dr. Drayna, who was studying the genetics of stuttering, quickly realized that Joe’s huge family could be critical to discovering more genes that could be causing the disorder.

Shortly after, Dr. Drayna and his team traveled to Cameroon. There they took blood samples from more than 150 people, including 50 in Joe’s family who stuttered.

The Lukong family, says Dr. Drayna now, "allowed us to find the fourth gene" linked to stuttering.

Participating in the research had a huge effect on Joe's life too.

Getting help and confidence

It helped him understand stuttering better. It also gave him access to free speech therapy and the confidence to help others who stutter.

"You have to understand, I grew up in a small rural town," Joe says. "In our school, teachers were not sure how to deal with people with speech problems. They would laugh at them and then the students would follow."

"The people who really matter will care what you have to say, not how you say it."- Joe Lukong

As for speech therapists, there were only a few in the entire country and only in the bigger cities.

Joe said he tried to hide his stuttering "because I feared people would have a negative impression of me."

But after the NIDCD research, he helped organize a stuttering conference that helped more than 100 people in Cameroon get speech therapy.

"It helped me realize I wasn’t alone. It helped me let go of my fear of stuttering," he says.

Joe, his wife, and son now live in Minnesota, where he works with people with mental disabilities.

His advice to those who stutter: "Don’t let it keep you from achieving your goals. The people who really matter will care what you have to say, not how you say it."

Speech therapy helps people with stroke relearn language and speaking skills or learn other forms of communication. Speech therapy is appropriate for people who have no problems with cognition or thinking but have problems understanding speech or written words, or problems forming speech. Speech therapy also helps people develop coping skills to deal with the frustration of not being able to communicate fully. With time and patience, speech therapy can help a stroke survivor regain some, and sometimes all, language and speaking abilities.

Many IDDs have no cure, but there are often ways to treat their symptoms. For example:

• Children with Down syndrome, Fragile X syndrome, Rett syndrome, and other IDDs can often benefit from therapeutic speech therapy, occupational therapy, and exercises to improve their gross- and fine-motor skills. They might also be helped by special education and attention at school and by the efforts of parents, educators, and healthcare practitioners to encourage social contact and communication. In addition, for children with Down syndrome, surgery can help correct heart defects that may be present.
• A variety of treatment options are available to help with the symptoms of autism spectrum disorders. Options may include behavioral, occupational, physical, and speech-language therapy. In addition, educational specialists can help guide the child’s school experiences.
• Treatment for hypothyroidism, or underactive thyroid, includes daily oral hormone treatment.
• The most effective treatment for phenylketonuria (PKU) is a special diet that carefully limits intake of the amino acid phenylalanine. People with PKU who begin this diet at birth or shortly thereafter develop normally and usually have no symptoms of PKU. It is important that individuals with PKU stay on the special diet through adolescence and that women with PKU continue the diet before and during pregnancy to promote the best health outcomes.