What is Speech Therapy and why is it so powerful?

My name is Angela Kavallieratos and I have recently joined Synergy Holistix as the Speech Therapist/Audiologist. Here is a little bit of information on my work and why I am so passionate about it:

Many people have no idea what a speech therapist actually does, many people believe we are elocutionists that work on ‘proper’ speech and treat tongue thrusts. Contrary to this belief we offer a much wider service to a very diverse population with many different pathologies.

The profession of speech therapy or speech pathology is a profession that is devoted to assessment, habilitation, rehabilitation, counseling, and prevention services for individuals from birth through old age who have some type of speech, voice, language, cognitive-communicative, or swallowing disorder. Not only do we strive to remediate speech and language disorders but also offering alternative and augmentative means of communicating. Our goal is to achieve quality of life for patients and their families by assisting them to communicative more effectively in their everyday lives. Communication is the essence of human life.

For many of my patients, simple tasks like saying ‘yes’ or calling for attention is a tall order and they need as much support and facilitation to complete these ordinary responses. Speech therapy has taught me not to take ordinary responses for granted and continue to work to create as many positive communicative moments in my client’s lives.