Hope for young stutterers

Children who stutter should be treated before they start school to improve the speech disorder that affects about 5 per cent of youngsters, Australian scientists say.
Stuttering, or stammering, usually begins when a child is three or four years old. Boys are three times more likely to suffer from the problem.

There is no cure but researchers at the Australian Stuttering Research Centre at the University of Sydney, who developed and evaluated an early treatment called the Lidcombe programme to treat stuttering, said it improved the condition.

"After nine months, the reduction of stuttering in the Lidcombe programme group was significantly and clinically greater than natural recovery," Mark Onslow, the director of the centre, says in a report in the British Medical Journal.

Mr Onslow and his team evaluated the programme in a study involving 54 children. Twenty-nine received the treatment and 25 acted as a control.

Only 15 per cent of the youngsters in the control group attained a minimal amount of stuttering compared with 77 per cent of those who had the treatment.

- REUTERS