Have you ever heard of Speech-Language Pathology? Maybe a cousin went to their school SLP because they couldn’t say their R's or stuttered a little. Maybe you have a brother who has an Autism Spectrum Disorder, or a sister with Down Syndrome who works closely with an SLP. Potentially, a grandparent has had a stroke or a friend had a traumatic brain injury and you met their SLP while visiting them in the hospital? In any of these cases, you may wonder, what does the SLP even do?

According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, a Speech Pathologist is a person who “work(s) to prevent, assess, diagnose and treat speech, language, social communication, cognitive-communication and swallowing disorders in children and adults.” SLP’s work with a multitude of speech or language conditions in many different environments. You can find them in schools, hospitals, nursing homes, private practices, corporate agencies and government agencies. They use their own language (phonetics) and often play fun games. That is an awful lot to try and understand, so let me break it down for you.

A Speech-Language Pathologist is not someone who strictly works with those who have difficulty speaking, which is what most people commonly believe. SLP’s work on all aspects of communication, including how we understand others, how we express ourselves, appropriate social behavior when communicating, the muscles associated with communicating, language, speech, reading and writing, just to name a few. You may be thinking to yourself, “Well that is silly, it's easy to learn how to communicate!”

You would be wrong in many cases. Imagine being in the U.S. having never heard or learned any English, and you couldn't talk with or use your hands. Now imagine you are having a conversation with your mom and all that you hear coming out of your mouth is gibberish, but you thought you were speaking correctly. What about if you had no control over your lower jaw or if you couldn’t swallow your own saliva? Any of these would pose a challenge to portraying your needs and wants, but some people have combinations of these problems and more. That’s where an SLP comes in.

An SLP works through almost the entire process with the client or patient, and even though no disorder will ever truly be cured, they do their best to help make it manageable. They may not be true super heroes, but to some people the impact an SLP can have is life-changing. So next time you see someone using an assistive device to talk or a person using numbers to spell out what they are trying to say, think about the team behind them and the SLP who is working hard to make their patients' lives that much easier. | ˈaɪ ˈkænɒt weɪt tə bi ə spiːtʃ pəˈθɒlədʒɪst |