Lack of support services means a daily struggle for the 45,000 adults and 15% of children with stammers in Ireland. Iva Pocock reports.
There is a critical need for a specialist facility to provide support services for people affected by stammering, according to a recent gathering of expert therapists and public health practitioners.
Such a centre of excellence is vital because of the huge gap in services currently available to thousands of people who stammer, they say.
"Unless we can develop a specialist centre in Ireland, those affected will continue to struggle in the face of poor facilities and inadequate therapy services," Patrick Kelly, a senior speech and language therapist (SLT) in the north western area and chairman of the Irish Stammering Association, told the recent meeting organised by the association.
About 1 per cent of the population - some 45,000 adults - have a stammer, and childhood incidence of the disorder is estimated at 15 per cent. Stuttering can severely affect people's quality of life, yet in many health board areas there are waiting lists of two to three years for therapy.
"If you have a child of under two years old who develops a non-fluency and they are not seen until they are five or six, it can be too late. They could have the stammer for the rest of their life," Kelly says.
Only the former north western health board runs free intensive therapy courses for adults.
Called the PATMAR programme, it is an eight-day intensive course, catering for 12 people at a time. Last year Kelly ran two courses. "When you think that there are 40,000 people there's an awful lot of people to go through," he says.
A national centre of excellence would plug this gap and provide a place for people to seek specialist therapy, similar to that provided at the children's Michael Palin Centre in London, says Kelly.
A national specialist facility would also provide a training place for Irish SLTs, most of whom have no specific experience in dealing with stammers, he says.
Prof Ivan Perry, a UCC epidemiologist and public health practitioner who has had a stammer all his life, strongly supports the call for a national centre of excellence.
From the perspective of a public health practitioner there are three factors involved in making the case for such a facility, and a specialist stammering centre meets them all, he says.
First, it is important to show the condition is sufficiently common to merit investment. Given that there are some 45,000 stammerers in Ireland, this is clearly the case.
Second, there must be evidence that effective interventions are available. With regard to both adult and childhood stammering, effective therapies are available, Prof Perry says.
"While there is no single cure for the condition, people can learn the necessary skills in order to live with the problem and to communicate effectively," he says.
"If it is picked up early in children, speech and language therapy interventions can reduce the probability that they'll have a lifelong stammer."