Many people don’t realize that speech therapy is not the same as voice therapy. In speech therapy, there are different areas of focus for the examination, treatment and counseling of infants, children, adolescents and adults. Find out the most important facts about voice therapy.
In adults, disorders with vocabulary and/or grammar (aphasia) occur, for example, after neurological events (such as a stroke). In the LAOLA project, however, we focus exclusively on the treatment of dysphonia (from the Greek phōné: “sound, tone”, and dys: “wrong, bad”). In other words, we want to treat voice disorders.
A voice disorder occurs when the performance of the voice is restricted and its sound is altered. There can be various causes for this. For example, voice disorders can develop due to overuse (e.g., loud and strenuous speaking in front of background noise); however, they can also have organic causes (e.g., reccurens paresis following thyroid surgery).
The treatment and prognosis of voice disorders is always individual. With LAOLA, we are researching a digital aid for adults who are undergoing therapeutic treatment for a voice disorder.
