Stuttering severity and anxiety in Egyptian school-aged children

Abstract

Context With time, a child who stutters may change from relaxing, easy repetition to more tense and advanced stuttering, including blocks and prolongations. When the authors recommend the child to slow down, say it again, take a breath, this increases his anxiety and fear, produces more difficulties with speaking and, as a cycle it in return make more fear, anxiety, and expectation of stuttering. Aim The aim of the study was to assess stuttering severity and correlate it with the degree of anxiety in school-aged children who are stuttering. Settings and design It is a comparative study. Patients and methods In this study, there were two groups: The study group consisted of 50 stuttering children with age that ranged from 6 to 16 years. The control group consisted of 50 children selected from the general population who have normal fluency; they were age-matched and sex-matched with the participants in the study group. Results There was a highly significant positive correlation between stuttering severity and the degree of anxiety/depression problems among the stuttering group with a P value of 0.001. Conclusion There is a significant relationship between severity of stuttering and presence of anxiety among school-aged children. This result can be useful in treatment programs for children who stutter, especially in the presence of anxiety, social phobia, and depression.