A voice disorder occurs when voice quality, pitch, and loudness differ or are inappropriate for an individual’s age, gender, cultural background or geographic location.
A voice disorder is also present when an individual expresses concern about having an abnormal voice that does not meet daily needs; even if others do not perceive it as different or deviant.
Our speech language pathologists work closely with several local otolaryngologists (ENTs) to assess the physiology of the vocal folds and treat a variety of voice impairments.
Voice Therapy
A fluency disorder is an interruption in the flow of speaking characterized by atypical rate, rhythm, and disfluencies (repetitions of sounds, syllables, words, and phrases; sound prolongations; and blocks), which may also be accompanied by excessive tension, speaking avoidance, struggle behaviors, and secondary mannerisms.
Stuttering, the most common fluency disorder, is an interruption in the flow of speaking characterized by specific types of disfluencies.
Cluttering, another fluency disorder, is characterized by a perceived rapid and/or irregular speech rate, atypical pauses, maze behaviors, pragmatic issues, decreased awareness of fluency problems or moments of disfluency, excessive disfluencies, collapsing or omitting syllables, and language formulation issues, which result in breakdowns in speech clarity and/or fluency.