Ilham Abdulaziz
Posted on: Saturday, April 2, 2022 – 3:18 PM | Last update: Saturday, April 2, 2022 – 3:18 PM
The family of the American star Bruce Willis announced, in a statement via Instagram, his permanent retirement from acting, following confirming that he had a “speech aphasia” and was unable to speak, read or write.
The American newspaper “CNN” published a report on the details of aphasia, its causes and methods of treatment, which we monitor in the following lines.
According to the newspaper, aphasia, is a brain disorder in which a person loses the ability to speak, understand, and even read and write, and it is more common than “Parkinson’s disease”, “cerebral palsy” or “muscular dystrophy”, and affects regarding two million Americans, according to the National Aphasia Association ( ASHA), and regarding 180,000 people are diagnosed each year.
• What is aphasia?
“Aphasia is a devastating condition that robs a person’s ability to communicate, making it difficult for them to write, speak, or even understand what others are saying,” the association said.
People with aphasia can also have problems finding words, using words out of order, speaking erratically or using short parts of speech, and they can even make up meaningless words into their speech and writing, according to the American Language Hearing Association.
• Suffering of patients with aphasia
Written communication can be riddled with grammatical errors and complementary sentences, and a person with aphasia can also have problems copying letters and words accurately, and the understanding of others can be affected, too, ASHA said.
People with aphasia may not understand spoken or written sentences or need extra time to absorb and understand what is being said or read. They may lose their ability to recognize words by sight or to pronounce written words. It is difficult for people with aphasia to follow a fast speaker. , or understand complex sentences and concepts.
• How can the effect of aphasia differ on a person?
Depending on the extent and location of the brain damage, some people only lose their ability to find or repeat words and phrases, but are still able to speak and understand. This is called “fluent” aphasia, compared to “non-fluent” aphasia, for those who suffer more harm.
• Causes of aphasia
Aphasia is caused by damage to the language centers of the brain, and is often the result of an infection or tumor in the brain, or a degenerative disease of the brain such as dementia. However, stroke is the biggest cause of this condition. Between 25% and 40% of stroke survivors develop aphasia, according to the National Aphasia Association, with older adults most at risk.
• Methods of Treatment
Treatment focuses on the person’s symptoms. For those with milder forms of aphasia, treatment can be restorative, using speech therapy to retrain the brain to recognize words, speak and write.
For people with degenerative conditions, where further declines are expected, health professionals often focus on providing compensatory assistance in the form of images and large print formats to help the person communicate, according to the National Aphasia Association.
Full recovery from aphasia is unlikely if symptoms persist longer than 2 or 3 months following a stroke, but “some people continue to improve over years and even decades.”
