 | Gentry White is the owner and lead therapist for Southeast Kansas Speech Pathology Services in Pittsburg Kansas. She received her Bachelor of Science in Education from the University of Nebraska at Kearney in 1998 and her Master of Arts in Audiology and Speech Sciences degree from Michigan State University in 2001. She has been practicing Speech-Language Pathology in southeast Kansas since moving to Pittsburg in 2001. Gentry resides in the Pittsburg area with her husband and children. She can be contacted through her website www.sekspeech.com or her office phone at 620-232-2990. |
Health & Rehabilitation
2012-08-02 12:24:53
When do you begin speech therapy after a brain injury?
Q- "My daughter was in a very horrific car crash and sustained brain injury and currently going through physical therapy. However, her doctors have not yet addressed the problems with speech. When is it time to address those issues?"
A- To the parent of the child who was in the car crash: I can’t imagine what your family has been through since your daughter’s car accident. The most important factor in any recovery is the support system that that person has in place. Traumatic brain injury generally involves two areas of the brain; the coup (impact side) and the countrecoup (opposite side of impact). These injuries can range from focal (more localized) to more diffuse (wider area of impact). The speech centers of the brain are in the temporal lobes but the way that a person reacts to things is contained within the frontal lobe (forehead area) which is a common injury sustained from an accident. The brain is tied together through the motor cortex as well as memories and associations built up from that person’s life. When the brain sustains injury, those associations can be sheared and damaged from that accident often resulting in difficulty with areas that would be related to speech, language and social communication. The person who sustained the car accident may have difficulty with word-finding errors, reasoning, social language, as well as memory. When your daughter is medically stable and okayed for rehabilitation by her primary care physician she would benefit from a speech and language evaluation through a Speech Pathologist. An evaluation may assist with looking at your daughter’s weaknesses as well as her strength within the areas of speech, language and cognition. In-order-to return to her previous function, an evaluation may indicate what areas may need further rehabilitation. Best wishes on your daughter’s recovery and rehabilitation.
