Post-Stroke and Brain Injury Speech Therapy
Recovering communication skills after a stroke or traumatic brain injury (TBI) can be overwhelming. Even if your thoughts are clear, you may struggle to get the words out. Difficulties might include forming sounds, finding the right words, or putting together complete sentences.
What Types of Communication Can Be Affected
A stroke or brain injury can have wide-ranging effects on communication, influencing not only how clearly you speak but also how you process and express language, organize your thoughts, and interact with others in everyday situations. These challenges can affect multiple aspects of communication, including:
Speech clarity
Weakness or reduced coordination in the tongue, lips, or jaw can make speech slurred, slow, or difficult to understand. Even familiar words may require extra effort to articulate, and listeners may need to ask for repetitions, which can be frustrating for both parties.
Speech motor planning
In apraxia of speech, the brain knows what it wants to say, but the muscles don’t always execute the plan correctly. This can lead to mispronunciations, repeated attempts at words, or pauses as the person struggles to coordinate movements, making fluent speech challenging.
Understanding language
Processing spoken or written information can become harder, especially when multiple ideas are presented quickly. You might miss key details, misinterpret instructions, or struggle to follow conversations in group settings, which can impact both social and professional interactions.
Word-finding difficulties
You may experience “tip-of-the-tongue” moments where you know the word but can’t retrieve it. This can slow conversations, cause frustration, and make explaining complex ideas more difficult, sometimes leading to substitutions or vague descriptions instead of precise vocabulary.
Cognitive challenges
Memory, attention, and planning skills may also be affected, which can influence communication. Forgetting recent conversations, losing track of topics, or struggling to organize thoughts into coherent sentences can make interactions confusing, requiring additional strategies to stay engaged and understood.
What are Aphasia, Dysarthria, and Apraxia?
Aphasia, dysarthria, and apraxia are different types of communication difficulties that can result from a stroke or brain injury. Aphasia affects your ability to understand or express language, which may cause you to mix up words, use the wrong ones, or struggle to comprehend what others are saying. Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder caused by weakened or uncoordinated muscles, resulting in slurred, slow, or effortful speech. Apraxia of speech involves difficulty planning and coordinating the movements needed for speech, even though the muscles themselves are not weak, making it challenging to produce words accurately and fluently.
How Speech Therapy Helps Recovery
A speech-language pathologist (SLP) begins by evaluating your communication strengths and challenges to create a therapy plan tailored to your needs. Therapy includes personalized daily routines and functional communication tasks, with consistent feedback and adjustments to ensure progress. The overall goal is to help you communicate with greater ease, confidence, and independence in everyday life, whether in social settings, at school, or in the workplace.
Brain Retraining
Exercises help rebuild neural pathways, improving word retrieval, speech accuracy, and overall fluency.
Structured Practice
Activities target memory, naming, and sentence building, gradually increasing in complexity to support real-life communication.
Compensatory Strategies
Gestures, pictures, communication boards, or devices provide alternative ways to express yourself when speech is difficult.
Family Support
Loved ones learn how to reinforce therapy goals at home and create a conversation-friendly environment that encourages practice and confidence.
Get Speech and Communication Rehabilitation Support
If you or a loved one is navigating life after a stroke or brain injury, speech therapy can play a vital role in recovery. At SpeechLab Toronto, we offer online therapy for teens and adults across Ontario. Book a free consultation today to start your rehabilitation journey.