International Stuttering Awareness Day
In a world where fluency of speech is often taken for granted, this condition emerges as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
Raise awareness and reduce stigma around stuttering by celebrating resilience stories and speech therapy resources.
- Famous figures who stutter: overcoming challenges in leadership and public life
- Speech therapy breakthroughs: modern tools and techniques for fluency support
- Destigmatizing stuttering: how workplaces and schools can be more inclusive
- Personal triumph stories: how people with stuttering found their voice
Stuttering has been the subject of interest of many physicians over the millennia, with one of the most famous stutterers being prominent Ancient Greek statesman and Demosthenes. Demosthenes, who lived in the 4th century BC, could not speak without stuttering and was often mocked by his peers, causing him to become determined to get his condition under control, especially since he was an extremely intelligent man who had plenty to say about Athens’ political situation. One of the tactics he used was to practice speaking loud enough to be heard over the waves with pebbles in his mouth, and after much hard work, he succeeded. Other famous people who have had to deal their stutter include the Roman Emperor Claudius, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe, and James Earl Jones, whose voice the world knows as that of Darth Vader himself.
In ancient and medieval times, herbal remedies were often recommended for stuttering, as was drinking water from a snail shell, and the most superstitious believed that the condition could be caused by tickling an infant too much or allowing it to look at itself in the mirror. In the 18th and 19th centuries, different kinds of dangerous surgeries were prescribed to help correct a stutterer’s speech, from making small incisions in the tongue or lips to removing the tonsils, none of which were effective. Nowadays, various kinds of fluency shaping therapy are prescribed that help the stutterer exercise more control over his or her lips, jaw and tongue. Simply decreasing a stutterer’s stress and anxiety levels has also been shown to greatly improve speech. As a last resort, several types of medication can also be prescribed, though their effectiveness seems to be quite limited and a number of side effects great.