Speech disorders and anxiety: interaction mechanisms and therapy potential

Abstract

Anxiety and speech disorders frequently co-exist, provoking and intensifying each other's manifestations, which is important to consider when choosing optimal therapeutic strategy. Linguistic anxiety is a separate anxiety disorder in which the speech itself, the fear of making a mistake may act as principal fear and start up the negative affect. Linguistic anxiety may develop due to disturbance of functional interactions between various systems in any healthy individual, but the risk of it developing increases significantly by the presence of initial speech defect such as post-stroke aphasia. Comorbidity of speech disorders and affective specter disorders is also noted in patients with neurodegenerative diseases. Strategies aimed at stopping anxiety may be effective for decreasing speech disorders severity.