Helping Adults with Communication Difficulties After Stroke or Brain Injury

The world encounters hundreds of brain strokes or injuries yearly, leading to communication issues. Although people surviving a brain stroke remain the same person from the outside, they face new difficulties with their communication and behavioural habits.

However, with proper treatment and care, a stroke survivor can start a new life with a new definition of communication. Here, we will discuss that. An NDIS-registered speech pathologist helps with communication skills with tips to follow.

What is a stroke or brain injury?

A stroke or brain injury causes due to bleeding or blockage in the brain. It can affect the brain suddenly or gradually, resulting in various aspects of physical and mental health. These may include the senses, reaction to physical feelings like pain, motor skills, language, emotions, memories and thinking. 

How does it affect adult communication?

A stroke can affect a person’s communication or use of language in several ways. For instance, it can cause impairment in language processing. It also causes weakness or paralysis in the facial muscles, tongue, throat muscles, etc., which makes swallowing, breathing control, and sound formation difficult.

Some of the conditions that affect communication after a brain stroke are as follows:

Aphasia

Aphasia or dysphasia occurs from damage to the area of the brain, which is typically known as a language control centre. Receptive aphasia happens due to damage to Wernicke’s area. It causes difficulty in understanding long and complex sentences, especially in a noisy background, and their own speech becomes incoherent. Damage to Broca’s area causes expressive aphasia, which results in difficulty with verbal expression. People with expressive aphasia can form short words, sounds and small sentences but are unable to form coherent or correct sentences. If several regions of the brain are affected, it can result in a mixed or global aphasia. It can cause difficulties in all forms of communication and prevent the person from expressing their thoughts through language.

Dysarthria and dyspraxia

Any leading NDIS-registered speech pathologist can identify dysarthria and dyspraxia in a brain stroke survivor. Dysarthria and dyspraxia affect the physical production or the act of articulating sounds while speaking. People with dysarthria are able to recognise and find words but cannot from their sounds for physical issues like muscular weakness. It results in words that are slurry and short bursts, irrespective of the normal state of mind of a person. On the other hand, dyspraxia involves coordination and movement difficulty in muscles related to speech. Thus, such muscles are unable to work in the necessary order, causing speech issues.

Other effects

Some other changes that contribute to difficulty in conversation include the followings:

1. A consistent or unchanging facial expression.

2. Loss of tone and voice modulation, causing difficulties in expressing emotion.

3. Trouble comprehending humour.

4. Challenges in participating in turn-taking during conversations.

These may make the person seem depressed when they are not. Some may recognise these problems and convey them to others to avoid miscommunication. However, people with anosognosia are unable to recognise these changes due to their brain damage which can hinder recovery.

Tips for communicating with adults after a stroke

The largest part of the brain, known as the cerebral cortex, is divided into two hemispheres. The right half of the brain controls emotions, cognitive thinking and spatial orientations. On the other hand, the left half of the brain controls a person’s expressive language skills, like talking ability and receptive language skills, such as the ability to interpret what others are saying. Below are the tips to help adults communicate after a brain stroke.

Tips for a right-brain stroke survivor

Caregivers or close people of stroke survivors can follow these tips below.

1. Maintain a safe environment where all potentially dangerous items must be kept in a place where the person cannot access them.

2. Offer and encourage them to accept help and be mindful of their sensory and visual difficulties.

3. Encourage stroke survivors to scan their surroundings and acknowledge the affected part of their body.

4. Reduce clutter and distractions to help them focus on tasks.

5. Prevent injuries from depth perception difficulties by marking or protecting pointed edges.

Tips for a left-brain stroke survivor

Below are some tips from leading speech pathology services in Katoomba, Australia

1. Be patient with the stroke survivor.

2. Use simple questions and commands that require yes or no answers. 

3. Exercise patience and reduce distractions by turning off the TV and limiting noise.

4. Avoid answering questions for them.

5. Speak at a normal volume and allow the survivor time to process information and form responses without rushing them.

How can speech therapy help?

Speech therapy is essential in rehabilitation after a stroke. It can help in fixing problems with facial muscles, which solves impairments of swallowing and forming the sound of words and language.

The therapist practice the following exercises:

1. Reading and writing

2. Following directions

3. Repeating words

They also assist in the following things:

1.Offer conversational coaching

2. Rehearsing speech

3. Create cues to assist individuals in recalling particular words

4. Discover methods to overcome particular disabilities, for instance, utilising symbols and gestures.

According to the therapists, the tips below helps communicate with stroke survivor:

1.Do not finish or interrupt the person’s sentence.

2. Speak clearly and slowly with a normal voice tone.

3. Use short and simple sentences and talk on one topic at a time.

4. Try to communicate with them in a clear and noise-free background.

5. Do not let them stress too much about intriguing thinking.

6. Look straight at the person while speaking to help them make eye contact and gain confidence.

7. Understand if the person is having difficulty interpreting, figuring out words or making sounds of the words. 

Final verdict

Speech and language problems in adults after a brain stroke can cause behavioural change and communication difficulties. If identified on time, the problems can be treated and cured with proper therapy. Any leading NDIS-registered speech pathologist can help brain stroke survivors with effective therapy. These are some tips from renowned therapists that can help communicate with the stroke survivor.