Aphasia Awareness Month

06/17/2014
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Are you aware of Aphasia; its causes and conditions?

It’s a strange sounding word, aphasia. It’s a word we’d rather not hear or ever come to know, but as a condition of the mind that’s common among elderly, it’s one we should very well be aware of. That’s why Aphasia Awareness Month is so important. It helps create awareness and understanding of this communication-robbing condition.

What is aphasia?

Aphasia is an impairment of language that affects the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write. Aphasia is always due to injury to the brain — most commonly from a stroke, and particularly in older individuals. But brain injuries resulting in aphasia may also arise from head trauma, from brain tumors, or from infections.

Aphasia can be so severe that it makes communication with the person suffering from it almost impossible, or it can be very mild. It may affect mainly a single aspect of language use, such as the ability to retrieve the names of objects, or the ability to put words together into sentences, or the ability to read. More commonly, however, multiple aspects of communication are impaired, while some channels remain accessible for a limited exchange of information. It’s the job of the professional to determine the amount of function available in each of the channels for the comprehension of language, and to assess the possibility that treatment might enhance the use of the channels that are available.

 

What causes aphasia?

The most common cause of aphasia is stroke, with about 25-40% of stroke survivors acquiring Aphasia. It can also be caused by head injury, brain tumor, and other neurological cause. An individual who’s suspected to suffer from aphasia is typically referred to a speech-language pathologist, where the diagnosis of aphasia is made after comprehensive examinations of the individual’s communication abilities. At times aphasia may resemble other communication disorders such as apraxia of speech, dysarthria, and dementia, yet it’s important to distinguish aphasia from these other conditions because prognosis and treatment differ significantly.

While aphasia is most common among older people, it can occur in people of all ages, races, nationalities, and gender. While no significant ethnic or gender differences have been found in the incidence of aphasia, significant gender differences have been found in type of aphasia and severity. Wernicke’s and Global aphasia have been found to be more common in women, whereas Broca’s aphasia is more common in men.

 

Aphasia Awareness Month

An awareness month poster, information, and a contest can be found here. To learn more about aphasia, including the symptoms and variety of the condition, visit the National Aphasia Association (NAA) website or the website the American Psychological Association.

The National Aphasia Association (NAA) is a nonprofit organization that promotes public education, research, rehabilitation and support services to assist people with aphasia and their families. The NAA helps about resources to recover lost skills to the extent possible, to compensate for skills that will not be recovered, and to minimize the psychosocial impact of the language impairment.

 

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BLOG Date: Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Writer: Ryan Allen

 

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