Verbal dyspraxia is the most severe condition affecting the production of sounds during the  development of language. It is calculated that up to 0,2% of all children can suffer from dyspraxia and 4,3% of the cases result in speech disorders. The European Day of Speech and Language Therapy, 6 March, aims to make this condition and the ones who suffer from it visible.

The next 6 March, the European Day of Speech and Language will focus on verbal dyspraxia. It is calculated that up to 0,2% of all children can suffer from dyspraxia and 4,3% of the cases result in speech disorders. It affects more boy children than girls.

This annual event has a clear objective: to inform. To inform patients about what type of help they can receive and where. The European Day of Speech and Language Therapy also aims to make society aware of the possible communicative disorders, as well as value the work of speech and language therapists. Among the main addressees of this communicative campaign are:

Patients and clients. The European Day of Speech and Language Therapy offers information about the communicative and speech disorders, as well as possible treatments.

Doctors, teachers and professionals. It is a meeting point for speech and language therapists of the EU.

Political representatives. It gives visibility to the problems of a group that cannot express their difficulties as easy as others.

Journalists and general public. The activities of the EU day fulfil an informative labour offering a wide range of interesting information about speech and language, communication disorders and treatment possibilities.

Speech and language therapists. It shows the contribution of these professionals to health assistance and education.

Verbal dyspraxia

Verbal dyspraxia is a neurological disorder affecting the brain area that controls the speech, interrupting the transmission of certain messages between the brain and the muscles of the face, obstructing the production and sequencing of sounds. People suffering from dyspraxia are unable to emit the sounds they want, which can generate frustration.

Children with verbal dyspraxia have not a very intelligible speech but whose gestures and facial expression indicate that they want to communicate. Researchers point out that there are no structural problems observed nor neurological within the oral mechanisms which can justify the absence of intelligibility.  In severe cases, those symptoms last until adulthood. In order to help its treatment, exercises related to the vocal apparatus and tongue can be made.

Dyspraxia is commonly associated to other disabilities or developmental disorders, such as cognitive deficits, coordination developmental disorders and genetic syndromes.

In Verbal dyspraxia: its clinical characteristics and treatment with speech therapy (Neurology Journal, 2005), A. Ygual-Fernández and J.F. Cervera-Mérida point out that in the clinical picture of the praxial deficit can be identified, among others, these symptoms:

• Periods of significant unintelligibility;
• Errors in speech sounds (distorted emission of a great number of sounds);
• Errors in the articulation of vowels;
• Errors in executing, isolating and sequencing oral movements of an automatic level, not speech;
• Diverting patterns during the speech development.

The same authors also point out that in the diagnosis of verbal dyspraxia an evidence of the motor problem (or praxial failure) must be found –access and execution of motor programmes that allow the pronunciation of phonemes and phoneme sequences automatically– and of the phonological problem –incorporation, access and recovery of the mental representations of phonological forms of the words built based on the phonological code and phonotactic rules of the language–.

The 6 March will also make the role of speech and language therapists visible, who improve the life’s quality of people and groups suffering from a speech disorder. Typically this discipline is confused with others such as pedagogy, psychology and neurology, however, the speech and language therapy has a very concrete field of specialization: speech problems that can have some people through their lifetime, such as those derivate from neurodegenerative processes, accidents, psychiatric illnesses, etc.