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Subscribe to RSSIt seems stammering is having a moment: Early this morning, "The King's Speech" received 12 Academy Award nominations, more than any other film this year. One of those nods went to Colin Firth, who many expect to win for his portrayal of King George VI, the English king with a debilitating stammer. Now the speech impediment is all the Internet can talk about.
But one type of stammer that's not being widely discussed is sudden onset stuttering. For most, stuttering begins in childhood, while children are developing language skills – but in rare cases, it can come come on suddenly, mangling the speech of adults who'd never struggled with the problem before.
The cause of sudden onset stuttering is either neurogenic (meaning the brain has trouble sending signals to nerves, muscles or areas of the brain that control speaking) or psychogenic (caused by emotional problems). A sudden stutter can be caused by a number of things: brain trauma, epilepsy, drug abuse (particularly heroin), chronic depression or even attempted suicide using barbiturates, according to the National Institutes of Health.
In sudden cases sparked by underlying psychological issues, "often times, you can find that it's not so sudden; there might be a history of stuttering that had been outgrown," says Dr. Tommie L. Robinson, former president of American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and director of the speech and hearing program at Children’s Nation Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
According to one 1998 case report, a 30-year-old woman hit her head in a car crash, and the trauma to her brain appeared to cause a temporary stutter. And in a 1982 case, a 28-year-old man developed a stutter after a suicide attempt; his doctors believe his sudden speech impediment was the result of psychological distress.
The movie hints that the king’s trouble with speech may have been psychogenic, as it may have been the result of the extreme pressure he felt from his father. (When he begins to have trouble getting out the words, his father demands, “Get it out, boy!” Not exactly helpful.) Experts once believed all cases of stuttering were psychogenic, but that particular cause is actually known to be very rare. In fact, last year scientists isolated three genes that cause stuttering.
Oh, and in case you were wondering: stuttering and stammering are synonymous, Robinson says. "'Stammering' is more of a British thing," he explains.
Some quick facts on stuttering from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders:
- Stuttering affects people of all ages, but it most often begins in children ages 2 to 5, as they develop language skills.
- About 5 percent of all children stutter at some point in their life.
- Boys are twice as likely to stutter as girls – and as they grow up, the number of boys who continue to stutter is three to four times larger than the number of girls.
- Most children grow out of their stutter. Only about 1 percent of adults stutter.
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They had me drugged up, zombified on Risperdal for "bipolar disorder"....funny, seeing as Risperdal is an ANTICONVULSANT. Those money grabbing @!$%#s should've known that I don't have a @!$%#ing seizure disorder. I could hardly say my own name on that drug. I couldn't string together a coherent sentence, and it @!$%#ed up my speech for quite a bit, even after I got off meds. It not only affected my speech, because whenever I tried to write, my hands would start shaking, and the letters would get smaller and smaller, until you couldn't tell what I wrote.
It looks like you're not out of the woods yet.
What do you mean not out of the woods?
My Mother who is 86 years old suffers from sudden onset of stuttering. We have had her examined by a PCP a specialist and had her undergo a brain scan. Neither Doctor could explain the onset. After reading the article which explains that chronic depression can be a cause this may explain her stuttering. Her speech pattern is greatly improved when she is around other family and friends. She suffers from depression but refuses to take any medication for it. I'm now going to speak to her Doctor to ask if he thinks depression might be the cause. Thank you!!
Al Davis-2800794, your post got my attention in a serious way and I hope you are able to read this reply at some point. My grandmother began having speech problems in '02 similar to stuttering, sometimes slurring her words slightly as well. Her primary doctor of nearly 20 years, followed by 2 neurologists, diagnosed her as having "a series of small strokes" as her symptoms worsened and she began to have difficulty swallowing as well. It wasn't untill 2 years later that it was discovered to actually be Bulbar's Palsy, a degenerative nerve disease that affects muscles in the face, throat, esophagus, and eventually the lungs. My grandmother would become irritated with herself and embarassed when speaking around people other than close family, and that made it worse. Please consider looking into this disease a bit and possibly discuss with your mother and a specialist just in case.
I don't stutter and have never had a history of such. However, I have found myself to stutter three times in my life, all three times spaced out between years of time. Each moment had one specific element of cause; a pretty girl. Three times in my life I came across a girl that I thought so pretty and, obviously, so intimidating (to me) that when I spoke I suddenly found myself stuttering out words for which I didn't had no control over. It only lasted a moment - a single sentence or two at most before the sudden onslaught of embarrassment was over with but it still happened nonetheless and with quite a bit of surprise to me. This leads me to believe that there's also other neurological causes at play when it comes to high emotion or bouts of sudden, extreme feelings that can cause stuttering that wasn't mentioned in this article. Am I the only one to ever experience such a thing? I wouldn't think so.
And no, I never got to date any one of those three girls, sadly enough. They were all way out of my league!
No, short occurrences of stuttering in normal stressful or emotional situations is ordinary. This article is referring to people who develop this problem and cannot shake it.
I have been known to stutter when I am very nervous. I believe that the cause must be neurogenic since this is such a rare occurrence. Sometimes the brain has trouble when intense emotions are involved.
I stutter and I have since I was 5 years old, now I'm 54 so I've gotten rather good at it. I heard something many years ago about the "sudden onset stuttering", but since I didn't have that problem I never really paid much attention to it.
For information on all types of stuttering you can go the National Stuttering Association website: www.westutter.org or to the Stuttering Home Page: www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster/stutter.html
Both websites are excellent sources of information and may be able to provide additional insight.
I just posted the website addresses and when it came up they were gone, so I'm trying it again. If they don't come through again, you can contact me directly at bobby@nettak.com and I will send the websites directly to you.
I've been slowly developing a problem with my speech ever since high school. I don't know why but sometimes and with certain people its more difficult to speak. I can say it is probably linked to a psychological problem, I was always quiet and shy as a result of parental opression. I get very nervous around some people and it just makes the situation worse; strangely, I do better in large groups than individuals or small groups of people.
I stutter when I am nervous or just trying to find the appropriate words to use. I think people who are multilingual like myself are especially prone to that as we think in several different languages so trying to put our thoughts into words in one language can take a few seconds to do.