Dysphemia/Stuttering

Stuttering, also called dysphemia, is a speech disorder that causes frequent and significant problems with fluency and continuity of speech. People who stutter know what they mean, but they have a hard time saying it. For example, they can repeat or prolong a word, syllable, consonant, or vowel. Or, they may pause while talking because they have come up with a problematic word or sound.

Stuttering is common in young children as a common aspect of learning to speak. Young children may stutter when their speech or language skills haven't developed enough to keep up with what they want to say. Most children outgrow this developmental stutter.

However, sometimes stuttering is a chronic disorder that persists into adulthood. This type of stuttering can affect self-esteem and interactions with other people.

Types of dysphemia. There are 3 types of dysphemia that can occur depending on the type of disfluency the person has:

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1. Tonic: characterized by multiple interruptions caused by spasms. During interruptions, the patient shows facial stiffness and tension. It is the one with the worst diagnosis.
2. Clonic: characterized by the repetitions of syllables and whole words, more frequent in consonants than in vowels, even more so in occlusive ones and which occur mostly at the beginning than in the middle of a word.
3. Tonic-clonic or mixed: this is the most common type, because it is difficult to find a pure tonic or clonic dysphemic, most of them combine the two symptoms.