Perspectives on Stuttering and Social Anxiety

Abstract

Speech is the central mechanism that supports daily communication with others and plays an important role in establishing and sustaining social relationships. It is the core factor in establishing and sustaining all academic and occupational links as well. Stuttering disrupts normal flow of speech and interferes with social interactions and quality of life. Disfluencies and secondary behaviors associated with stuttering can be socially disconcerting and individually frustrating. Consecutively this may hinder academic, occupational and social development. Anxiety might co-occur with stuttering as the social communicative interactions will be affected in a substantial manner. There has been increased evidence of the relationship between stuttering and related psychiatric symptoms such as chronic anxiety, depression and social phobia. The aim of this article is to understand the interaction between stuttering and social anxiety. It also highlights the existing intervention strategies for stuttering and the need to develop intervention protocols that directly address the social fears accompanying disfluencies or intervention strategies that may be more efficacious in reducing or eliminating stuttering behaviors.