#stutterers

“Stuttering is one of those disorders that when you say that you are a speech pathologist, people say, “oh yeah like you work with people who stutter?” Well I happen to be one of those people, yes. We are really talking about one percent of the population of persons who stutter. If you look at really tiny children under the age of five, you can look at anywhere from five to ten percent of the population-little children-who have some evidence of stuttering. And it is interesting to know that of those little ones, who appear to be stuttering, that by the time we get them to be six, seven, eight, nine, ten, really, we are looking at ten percent of the children who were indefinitely-persistent with stuttering. So, we do know that there is with most people, not everybody, but most people that are what we call are developmental stutterers. That means that since they started talking, they have demonstrated this repetition, prolongation, whatever it is, during their talking. There are some people that may have had some sort of brain injury-they might have had a traumatic brain injury [TBI], they could have had a stroke and that they will stutter during recovery. But they are very different people than people who are developmental stutterers. And that is like about, of the one percent population, I would say five percent were what we would call, neurological stutterers. And then there is even a smaller percentage, two percent maybe, of the one percent maybe even less than that, who are what we call psychogenic stutterers. This is where they have either experienced some sort of trauma, emotional or physical trauma, and that prior to the trauma they did not stutter. But they did after that. So, like the neurogenic stutters. The neurogenic stutters are when they have a frank evidence of brain injury. They did not stutter before, they had the brain injury and then they stuttered after. But these are different folks… the people who have psychogenic stutters. Their stuttering is different than folks who are developmental stuttering.

My name is Noah Rudman. I am an 18 year old filmmaker at Ohio University School of Media Arts and Studies. I am looking for four individuals who would be willing to be interviewed for a documentary about living with a speech impediment.  I myself have stuttered since I was 7 years old, and through my struggles with speech found my voice through writing. The key to this piece is getting the audience to understand that although we may struggle to express ourselves, each and everyone of us have a voice. 

Please feel free to email me if you have any interest or questions: 

[email protected]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msGvs8CwBCY

My new motto: be kind to yourself, and also be kind to your stutter. :)