Speech-Language Pathology is a field of expertise practiced by a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP), also commonly referred to as a Speech Therapist educated in the study of human communication, its development, and its disorders.
Speech Therapists provide a wide range of services to assess, diagnose, prevent, and treat people with communication and speech disorders. They can also work with people who have swallowing and/or chewing difficulties.
Treatment is carried out on an individual basis but could also include support for families, support groups, and information directed towards the general public.
Besides developmental abnormalities or external emotional stresses affecting one’s speech, disorders can also result from various forms of medical trauma such as a stroke, brain injury, hearing loss, craniofacial anomalies such as Cleft Lip / Palate, or cerebral palsy and so on.
Book an Assessment with one of the
professional therapists at Durban North Smile Center!
Some of the services (among others) that Speech Therapists at the center provide are
- Cognitive aspects – e.g., attention, memory, problem-solving, executive functions
- Speech – phonation, articulation, fluency, resonance, and voice including aeromechanical components of respiration
- Language – phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatic/social aspects of communication including comprehension and expression in oral, written, graphic, and manual modalities; language processing; pre-literacy and language-based literacy skills, phonological awareness.
- Swallowing or other upper aero-digestive functions such as infant feeding and aeromechanical events
- Voice – hoarseness (dysphonia), poor vocal volume (hypophonia), abnormal (e.g. rough, breathy, strained) vocal quality. Research has demonstrated efficacy of voice therapy to be helpful with certain patient populations like individuals with Parkinson’s disease who often develop voice issues as a result of their disease.
