Speech work popular

Press, 24 June 1978, Page 22

Speech work popular

Speech therapy is a popular profession in Britain, where “masses” of people want to train for it, according to a speech therapist from St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, Mrs Margaret Greene. People needed a special personality to be speech I therapists, said Mrs Green, i They needed a high academic standard and to be I skilful and sympathetic, j while not becoming imi patient or too upset over, or involved with their j patients. Mrs Greene said thera? pists were for the first time noticing some unemployment among the profession there,, because of the economic recession. I Mrs Greene wias invited j to New Zealand as gufest i speaker at the Speech ' Therapists’ Association i conference in Auckland

recently. She has been taking workshops for speech therapists and students round New Zealand at the invitation of the Education Department.

Mrs Greene works with children and adults with cleft palates, throat cancer, delayed speech development, cerebral palsy, stammers, or who have had strokes, or are autistic.

She also works with people who, because of continuous shouting and talking, develop “vocal nodes” or small callouses on their vocal chords. Such patients developed husky voices, and could lose their voices.

If speech therapists could teach such people how to use their voices correctly, the nodes could be cleared up, said Mrs Greene, but if they were

too well established they might have to be removed surgically.

Mrs Greene said she had seen more people in New Zealand with nodes than she had ever seen in Britain, although she knew of no reason for this. At St Bartholomew’s, Mrs Greene works with the medical electronics department, developing electronic speech aids. She also works with a speech and language unit for children with severe speech difficulties at a junior school in Hertfordshire.

Mrs Greene specialises in voice disorders and has written a book, “The Voice and its Disorders,” which is into its third edition. It is being used throughout the world as a text-book for speech therapy students.