Besides affecting a person’s
language and communication skills, aphasia can have a serious effect on one’s
social
and family life. In some cases
of aphasia, the sufferer is known to actually blame the person with whom he or
she is trying to communicate. They feel
that it is this person’s fault that they cannot understand what he is trying to
say. This can cause many problems among
friends and family. Also, those
suffering from aphasia will sometimes say inappropriate things or even laugh or
cry at inappropriate times. Their
speech can become slurred and full of mispronounced words as if they were drunk
and this can cause people to not want to be around those with aphasia. This disorder can be extremely disruptive to
families as well as friends and those that have aphasia. Families can have difficulty dealing with a
family member who has aphasia and therefore people with aphasia often feel
isolated and ignored. When conversation
and communication is so difficult many times friends will stop inviting,
calling, or visiting all together.
Aphasia can also cause problems in the work place. With communication limited many people with
aphasia are unable to do their jobs anymore forcing them to retire or try to
find another job they can complete.
This just furthers their feelings of loneliness and frustration. Many people with aphasia can become
desperate and even suicidal (“When Brain Damage Disrupts Speech”).
Despite
all these negative aspects, there is a positive outlook for sufferers of
aphasia. Although language is usually
altered immediately after a serious accident causing damage to the brain, many
times the majority of a person’s language skills can return to normal. This can happen anytime from a number of
weeks to months depending on how long it takes the brain to recover from the
physical injury. Sometimes the loss of
language skills is just the result of the swelling of the brain, and once it
dies down, language can return to normal.
Also the younger a person is, the more likely that they will be able to
recover fully or at least partially from the effects of damage to the brain. This is because children’s brain tissue is
actually very healthy and can even have the unaffected tissue take over the
responsibilities of the damaged tissue (“Traumatic Brain Injury”). However, in adult brains the tissue is not
as resilient and therefore is not as likely to heal as well as a younger
person’s brain.
Luckily, there are
physical ways to actually help speed up the process of recovery as well. Speech therapy and counseling can play a
very important role in helping with language problems as well as dealing with
interacting with friends and family.
The sooner one begins therapy after the problems begin the better the
chance of a successful recovery.
Therapists can help families deal with the communication problems that
arise when someone has aphasia and even help find the sufferer work that is not
as dependent on the language skills that they no longer have.
Aphasia
is a very serious problem in America and the world. However many of the problems could be avoided if more people
would wear their seat belts while in automobiles. Language and communication skills can be severely disturbed by
the different forms of aphasia.
Fortunately, this disease is not a totally serious problem as long as
the proper steps are taken to deal with it.
Therapy and counseling can go a long way toward healing and recovering
the language skills and social life of people that suffer from aphasia.