When a stroke damages your brain, you may find it difficult to speak, understand, read or write. This can affect your daily life. With the help of health professionals, family and friends, you can find ways to communicate better. Recovery after stroke can be a long term process, according to the National Stroke Association. Remember that speech is only one communication medium, and use facial expression, body language, gesture and pictures to make yourself understood.
Types
Different areas of your brain deal with understanding speech, finding the right words and putting them together in sentences. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association describes difficulty with any of these activities as aphasia. If you know the right words, but find it hard to make the right sounds, or your speech is slurred or slow, you may have dysarthria or dyspraxia. Damage to the right side of the brain may cause aphasia, while dysarthria is commonly the result of a stroke on the left side of the brain.
Activity Plans
Work on your speech should begin as soon as possible after a stroke, advises The Stroke Association. Every stroke is different, and you need to decide, with the help of a psychologist or speech-language pathologist, which communication goals you want to reach to improve your life. Ask for help, whether from your partner, a professional or a group. You may want to learn gestures to help your speech, or use pictures, or perhaps undertake exercises to improve the strength of your speech muscles.
Speech Exercises
You use the muscles of your face, including your lips, tongue, cheeks and the roof of your mouth, when you speak. You also need good breathing patterns to keep your voice strong. Dysarthria makes it hard to move these muscles as quickly and neatly as you expect. Try exercising your muscles with repetitive movements, speech sounds or words, increasing the speed of the movements as you improve.
Expert Insight
A health care professional may suggest you use a communication chart or an alternative method of communication. These augmentative and alternative communication aids can use systems based on single pictures, on the alphabet or on small sequences of symbols if reading is difficult. A team of health professionals cooperate to find the right method to meet your needs. Find a speech pathologist through the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
How to Help
You can help a family member or friend with speech difficulties, suggests The Stroke Association, by adapting the way you speak. Make sure the room is quiet and well lighted, so he can hear you easily and see your mouth. If he has aphasia, speak more slowly, pause between phrases and use simpler sentences so he can understand. Give him time to speak. You and the stroke victim may both want to use pictures and gestures to aid understanding and expression.
