Communications Recovery Advice

Communications recovery after stroke can be a significant contributor to the ongoing mental health of the stroke patient. This page provides you with some information on how to effect your communications recovery.

Leverage Neuroplasticity!

As with all stroke rehabilitation, the advances in brain plasticity research are encouraging and provide hope. The most important message is that the brain needs constant repetituion to force the neurons to reorganise to support the efforts and activity of the person. Whether this is in the area of movement of a limb, or improvement of speech to aid communication, the big message is constant repetition.

The way that the medical system works is that you get rehabilitation support immediately post-stroke. This will likely include speech therapy for a period of time. However, the speech therapy is likely to take place for up to an hour once, twice or thrice a week.

This frequency and intensity just doesn't satisfy what is needed to force the brain to reorganise for effective communications recovery. This means that the stroke patient should be working intensely at home. This can be done under the guidance of your speech therapist, or independently using tools such as those provided at Speech Therapy On Video (which provides a series of speech therapy videos that are specifically focused on the problems experienced by stroke patients) and Stroke Family (which provides a variety of aphasia recovery tools) .

Tips for Family and Friends

Whilst the communication problems many stroke patients experience are primarily due to injury to the areas of the brain associated with communication (Broca's area and Weirnecke's area), the stroke may not have affected other cognitive functions. This can make it difficult for the patient, when the communication and physical disabilities are what people focus on. Many people will assume that the person is intellectually disabled because of their speech or comprehension and this is not necessarily the case.

The following tips are useful when communicating with people who are affected with communications problems as a result of their stroke:

• Take the time to understand what the deficit is. Simply,
  • Expressive aphasia is where the person knows what they want to say (or write), but just can't find the right word(s).
  • Receptive aphasia is where what the person says doesn't make sense although their words are spoken fluently. People so affected can also have trouble comprehending what you are saying.
  • Dysarthria is when the person's speech is affected due to the inability to control the muscles used in speech.
  • Apraxia is when words cannot be pronounced consistently.
• Treat the person with the same respect you would like to be treated. Use normal language and words (i.e. don't "dumb down") and maintain your usual tone (i.e. "don't shout").
• Be patient. A stroke patient with aphasia can take a while to get their message across. Resist the temptation to finish their sentences for them, unless they turn to you for assistance.
• Keep your communication clear and to the point. Many people range over a number of topics in conversation, going off topic at random. Try to keep on topic.
• Use all means to communicate - write, draw, point, use your body expressively. We get a better picture of what you are trying to say by these supplementary means of communication.

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