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Online therapy helps stutterers as well as therapy in the consulting room
Around 800,000 people in Germany stutter. They often suffer doubly, on the one hand from their speech disorder, on the other hand from the reactions of their fellow human beings. A new study comes to the conclusion that online therapy helps stutterers as well as a comparable treatment in the consulting room.
About one percent of Germans stutter
More than one percent of the population in Germany stutters. The interruption of the flow of speech through conspicuous blockages, repetitions or strains, unfortunately, often leads to the fact that especially children are often victims of bullying. Although the stuttering usually ends with puberty, but by no means all. Why some people stutter, and others do not, has not been researched enough.
A recent study concludes that teletherapy helps stammerers as well as comparable treatment in the consulting room. (Image: verbaska / fotolia.com) Various therapeutic approaches
For stuttering children, adolescents and adults, various therapeutic approaches are available, which are offered in different forms. There are two main differences: "The stutter modification (also called 'non-avoidance approach') and the learning of fluency shaping," explains the Bundesvereinigung Stottern & Selbsthilfe e. V. on their website. You do not necessarily have to go to a treatment room, as a scientific study shows.
Online offer helps as well as treatment in the consulting room
The study commissioned by the Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) concludes that teletherapy helps stammerers as well as comparable occupational therapy. As the cash register reports in a communication, the team around Professor Dr. Ing. Harald Euler systematically recorded both the measurable speaker sequence and the perceived improvement over a period of one year and compared this with an attendance group in an internal research report.
The result: "With regard to the stuttering frequencies, both treatment formats of the same therapy method showed an effect with a moderately high to high effect strength, with regard to the subjective impairment with a very high effect size," says Euler.
No quality losses
Online therapy against stuttering has been offered for years in cooperation with TK.
"Teletherapy makes it possible for us to bring a high-quality offer such as the Kassel stuttering therapy to every place in the Federal Republic. Now we know that this treatment will not cause any loss of quality remotely, "said Drs. Susanne Klein, Head of Unit in TK-Versorgungsmanagement.
"Perspectively we see great potential for a number of other teletherapeutic offers that help to bridge temporal and spatial distance," said the expert.
Online communication will be self-evident in ten years
The population is also getting better and better with online services such as teletherapy. According to the TK Smarthealth study, about 82 percent of those surveyed assume that online communication will be taken for granted in ten years' time and 68 percent believe that physicians will continue to provide their patients with regular online care in the future.
This is how teletherapy works
At the beginning of the teletherapy of stutterers is the participation in a diagnostics and information day in Kassel, so that the therapists can make a personal impression of their online protégé.
Then follows a pure online therapy, which is based on the principle of so-called "fluency shaping" - the goal is a modified, softer speech, to relieve or even overcome the stuttering. It begins with a ten-day intensive phase of almost daily sessions lasting several hours to work on speaking.
The therapy takes place in individual and group sessions. A computerized program helps to practice outside the therapy sessions. (Ad)