ASPECTS OF THE ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION AT THE STUTTERING CHILD
Abstract:
The communication disorders represent some of the biggest difficulties found at the schoolaged
children. The verbal communication with the others represents an important ability, and the
involuntary experiment of a deficit regarding this ability would have as effect the growth of the fear to
speak. The various researches concerning the stuttering were dealing the relationship between the
stuttering and the anxiety. The stuttering is often associated with strong emotional reactions, such as
anxiety, magnified by negative consequences of the difficulty to speak correctly. The negative feelings
experienced by the child lead to a low self conception, and could go even to depression. The aim of the
study is the evaluation of the anxiety and depression at the stuttered children; the reduction of the
anxious/depressed symptoms by a psychology specialist intervention. Material and method: The study
group includes 15 children, with age between 8 and 16 years, from Cluj-Napoca, diagnosed with
stuttering. They were applied with the scales MASC (Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children) and
CDI (Child Depression Inventory), both at the introduction in the study and at its end. The psychological
intervention consisted of 10 group meetings, and the psychodrama and cognitive-behavioural techniques
were used during those meetings. Results: at the scale of anxiety there was noticed a significant
decrease on the most subscales, at the scale of depression there was noticed a significant decrease on
certain subscales at a passage of significance p <0.05. For analysis, the information was introduced in
the statistic program SPSS 16.0. Conclusions: the intervention made reduced partly both the stuttering
child’s anxiety and the depressive symptoms. At the studied sample, the depressive symptoms are present
in a less way then the anxious symptoms. The group therapy is favourable for reducing the emotional
difficulties faced by the stuttering child.
full text article in English (.EN) |