Parkinson's and speech

 

Hello everyone, I have a headache seem to be getting a few of them recently, oh well. This week let’s look a bit at speech problems and Parkinson’s Disease.

Those with PD may find their speech becoming weak and soft, Tim often says I am speaking so soft he has trouble hearing me, of course I do not notice any difference in my speech volume.

Also, some people thankfully not me may find themselves talking to fast so that their words tumble out on top of each other, or they may repeat a word involuntarily a number of times this is known as palilalia. Dribbling also makes speech difficult.

In order to help improve these issues the PD suffer must be fully aware of what is going on and maybe should use a recorder to record their voice and listen to it.

They can read aloud trying to increase the volume of their speech, singing along to a favourite song can be fun way of using your voice and increasing volume.

If speech problems become severe, they may want to see a speech therapist.

There are devices that can help a person speak like a speech amplifier to increase the volume. It is possible for someone with severe PD to lose the ability to speak all together this would suck and these people have to write things down.