Contemporary clinical conversations about stuttering: How clinically important is mental health during management of early stuttering?

Purpose: To discuss how clinically important mental health is during management of early stuttering. To inform early-career clinicians and students of speech-language pathology about contemporary views on this issue.

Method: The issue was discussed by three speech-language pathologists and a clinical psychologist.

Cost of Illness and Health-Related Quality of Life for Stuttering: Two Systematic Reviews.

Purpose: For those who stutter, verbal communication is typically compromised in social situations. This may attract negative responses from listeners and stigmatization by society. These have the potential to impair health-related quality of life across a range of domains, including qualitative and quantitative impacts on speech output, mental health issues, and failure to attain educational and occupational potential.

Overcoming death anxiety: a phase I trial of an online CBT program in a clinical sample.

Background: Growing research indicates that death anxiety is implicated in many mental health conditions. This increasing evidence highlights a need for scalable, accessible and cost-effective psychological interventions to reduce death anxiety.

Aims: The present study outlines the results of a phase I trial for one such treatment: (ODA).

Death anxiety and mental health: Requiem for a dreamer.

Recently, there has been an increased interest in the role of death anxiety in a broad range of mental health disorders. It has been argued that the fear of death may be a transdiagnostic variable contributing to the development and maintenance of many chronic mental health problems. Further, it has been suggested that death anxiety may be responsible for relapse and the emergence of new disorders in patients that have received successful treatment for earlier conditions in their lives.

Searching for Lidcombe Program mechanisms of action: Inter-turn speaker latency.

The Lidcombe Program is a well-established and efficacious treatment for early stuttering, but little is currently known about its mechanisms of action. The present report explores the possibility that inter-turn speaker latency might be associated with such mechanisms of action. Inter-turn speaker latency was measured in audio recordings of children, parents, and clinicians conversing, taken during Lidcombe Program treatment consultations.

Lidcombe Program translation to community clinics in Australia and England.

Background: Early intervention is essential healthcare for stuttering, and the translation of research findings to community settings is a potential roadblock to it.

Aims: This study was designed to replicate and extend the Lidcombe Program community translation findings of O'Brian et al. (2013) but with larger participant numbers, incorporating clinicians (speech pathologists/speech anlanguage therapists) and their clients from Australia and England.

Stuttering, family history and counselling: A contemporary database.

Background: Information about genetic influence is useful to when counselling parents or caregivers who have infants and children at risk for stuttering. Yet, the most comprehensive family aggregate database to inform that counselling is nearly four decades old (Andrews et al., 1983).

The Complexity of Stuttering Behavior in Adults and Adolescents: Relationship to Age, Severity, Mental Health, Impact of Stuttering, and Behavioral Treatment Outcome.

Purpose: This study investigated the complexity of stuttering behavior. It described and classified the complexity of stuttering behavior in relation to age, behavioral treatment outcomes, stuttering severity, anxiety-related mental health, impact of stuttering, and gender.

Method: For this study, a taxonomy was developed-LBDL-C7-which was based on the Lidcombe Behavioral Data Language of stuttering.

Improving adherence to a web-based cognitive-behavioural therapy program for social anxiety with group sessions: A randomised control trial.

Individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) commonly receive non-evidence based, ineffective treatments. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) has been demonstrated to be the gold standard treatment for treating SAD. Scalable web-based CBT programs ensure evidence-based treatment procedures, but low treatment adherence remains problematic.

Comparison of Stuttering Severity and Anxiety During Standard and Challenge Phone Calls.

Purpose: This study was designed to answer three questions. (a) Does percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) differ between standard and challenge phone calls. (b) Does anxiety differ between standard and challenge phone calls.

OCD, death anxiety, and attachment: what's love got to do with it?

Background: Death anxiety has been empirically implicated in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Research has shown that secure attachments appear to protect against fear of death, and are also associated with reduced risk of mental illness. However, few studies have investigated the moderating effect of attachment style in the relationship between death anxiety and OCD.

Conversational speech of school-age children after syllable-timed speech treatment for stuttering.

The purpose of this laboratory study was to investigate whether rhythmic speech was primarily responsible for stuttering reductions in four school-aged children after the instatement stage of the Westmead Program of syllable-timed speech (STS) intervention. The study was designed to inform further development of the program. Reduction in variability of vowel duration is a marker of STS, and it was predicted that this would be present in the children's conversational speech after Stage 1 of the program if they were using STS.

Death anxiety in the time of COVID-19: theoretical explanations and clinical implications.

Unlabelled: The recent COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a surge in anxiety across the globe. Much of the public's behavioural and emotional response to the virus can be understood through the framework of terror management theory, which proposes that fear of death drives much of human behaviour. In the context of the current pandemic, death anxiety, a recently proposed transdiagnostic construct, appears especially relevant.

Contemporary issues with stuttering: The Fourth Croatia Stuttering Symposium.

Purpose: During the 2019 Fourth Croatia Clinical Symposium, speech-language pathologists (SLPs), scholars, and researchers from 29 countries discussed speech-language pathology and psychological practices for the management of early and persistent stuttering. This paper documents what those at the Symposium considered to be the key contemporary clinical issues for early and persistent stuttering.

Methods: The authors prepared a written record of the discussion of Symposium topics, taking care to ensure that the content of the Symposium was faithfully reproduced in written form.

Measures of Psychological Impacts of Stuttering in Young School-Age Children: A Systematic Review.

Purpose Recent research has shown that some school-age children who stutter may have speech-related anxiety. Given this, speech-language pathologists require robust measures to assess the psychological effects of stuttering during the school-age years. Accordingly, this systematic review aimed to explore available measures for assessing the psychological impacts of stuttering in young school-age children and to examine their measurement properties.

Psychological characteristics of early stuttering.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use psychological measures of pre-schoolers who stutter and their parents to inform causal theory development and influence clinical practices. This was done using data from a substantive clinical cohort of children who received early stuttering treatment.

Method: The cohort ( = 427) comprised parents and their children who were treated with the Lidcombe Program, the Westmead Program, and the Oakville Program.

Existential Approaches and Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Challenges and Potential.

Existential concerns such as death, responsibility, meaninglessness, and isolation not only are the hallmark of existential psychotherapy but also are frequently encountered by CBT therapists-nevertheless, due to epistemological and ideological differences, existential and CBT approaches to psychotherapy had little overlap historically. During recent years, existential issues are increasingly discussed in empirical clinical psychology, e.g.

Speech and Anxiety Management With Persistent Stuttering: Current Status and Essential Research.

Purpose The purpose of this review article is to provide an overview of the current evidence base for the behavioral management of stuttering and associated social anxiety. Method We overview recent research about stuttering and social anxiety in the context of contemporary cognitive models of social anxiety disorder. That emerging evidence for self-focused attention and safety behavior use with those who stutter is considered in relation to current treatment approaches for stuttering: speech restructuring and social anxiety management.

Predictors of Lidcombe Program treatment dropout and outcome for early stuttering.

Background: Information is available about what predicts Lidcombe Program treatment time, but nothing is known about what predicts treatment prognosis.

Aims: To investigate the predictors of treatment dropout and treatment outcome for children who were treated for early stuttering with the Lidcombe Program (N = 277).

Methods & Procedures: A total of 32 variables were used as predictors in regression analyses of short- and medium-term Lidcombe Program outcome, and of treatment dropout.

Verbal Contingencies in the Lidcombe Program: A Noninferiority Trial.

Purpose The Lidcombe Program is an efficacious and effective intervention for early stuttering. The treatment is based on parent verbal response contingent stimulation procedures, which are assumed to be responsible for treatment effect. The present trial tested this assumption.

Clinical Trials of Adult Stuttering Treatment: Comparison of Percentage Syllables Stuttered With Self-Reported Stuttering Severity as Primary Outcomes.

Purpose In a companion paper, we found no statistical reason to favor percentage syllables stuttered (%SS) over parent-reported stuttering severity as a primary outcome measure for clinical trials of early stuttering. Hence, considering the logistical advantages of the latter measure, we recommended parent-reported stuttering severity for use as an outcome measure. The present report extends the prior analysis to a comparison of %SS with self-reported stuttering severity (SRSS) for use as an outcome measure in clinical trials of stuttering treatments for adults.

Phase I trial of a standalone internet social anxiety treatment for adolescents who stutter: iBroadway.

Background: iGlebe is a fully automated internet treatment program for adults who stutter that has been shown, in some cases, to reduce anxiety and effectively manage social anxiety disorder for many participants. No such automated internet treatment program exists for adolescents who stutter.

Aims: The present paper reports a Phase I trial of an adolescent version of the adult program: iBroadway.