Benefits of Speech Therapy

A speech therapist can help you with speech, language, and swallowing. They provide speech therapy to children and adults who may have speech or language disorders. Speech therapists, commonly known as speech-language pathologists (SLPs), are highly educated, trained, and experienced professionals. They often work as a team to help patients overcome a wide range of difficulties.

Children or adults that have difficulties communicating may also suffer from mental health and behavioral issues, suffer from poor confidence levels, and find social interactions hard can benefit from speech therapy. People with certain medical conditions may also benefit from speech therapy. Medical conditions that may cause speech or swallowing impairment include traumatic brain injury, stroke, and dementia.

Here’s how speech therapy can help with these challenges:

  1. Speech Therapy helps improve articulation – the formation of clear and distinct sounds in speech.
  2. Speech Therapy strengthens muscles that improve your ability to swallow.
  3. Speech therapy reduces stuttering
  4. Helps make your accent more understandable
  5. Helps increase confidence and reduce anxiety

What to Expect

Speech therapy begins with an evaluation to assess your difficulties and whether any structural issues contribute to your speech, language, feeding, or swallowing problems. A speech-language pathologist will then work with you to help improve your ability to speak, converse, or swallow.

 This may involve:

  • Educating you on how to do certain things like articulating or pronouncing sounds
  • Teaching you language skills
  • Providing you with educational materials
  • Giving you exercises to help strengthen your muscles 
  • Giving you exercises that help you breathe better