What is Language Disorder in Adults? Can you have a language disorder as an adult?

LANGUAGE is a system of symbols that an individual use for communication depending on one’s culture. Language is categorized as receptive language and expressive language.

Receptive language skill is the understanding of words, language, and their meaning. Receptive language skills are to listen, read and understand. Individual needs to follow the commands can understand when spoken to. One needs to understand what others say and can understand the meaning of what one has read.

Expressive language skills are through which one communicates their wants and needs through signs, gestures, writing, or words. One can narrate a story or a situation is an expressive language skill. Expressive language skill is a complex skill as compared to receptive language skill.

WHAT IS LANGUAGE DISORDER

Language disorder is part of a cluster of diagnoses called communication disorders in which a person finds difficulty in understanding and expressing. A person with language impairment has difficulty in comprehension and/or use of spoken language, written and/or other symbol systems.

The Language disorder involves one or more of these areas.

(1) language form (phonology, morphology, syntax),

(2) language content (semantics), and/or

(3) language function in communication (pragmatics)

What is an adult language disorder

Adults can acquire a language disorder due to an injury to the brain or it can be a developmental and /or occurred during childhood. Adult language disorder is known as Aphasia.

• Stroke: In stroke individual experiences difficulty walking, speaking, and understanding, as well as paralysis or numbness of the face, arm, or leg.
• Traumatic brain injury: A sudden injury caused to the brain is TBI. Traumatic brain injury happens when there is a sudden blow, bump, or jolt to the head. Traumatic brain injuries are closed head injuries. Traumatic brain injuries can also happen because of penetration in the skull. That is knowns as penetrating injury.
• Degenerative neurological or motor disorder: Neurodegenerative diseases are progressive degeneration that leads to the dying of nerve cells and are incurable and debilitating conditions. Neurological disorders lead to problems related to movements (called ataxias), mental dysfunctioning (called dementias) and affect the person's ability to move, speak and breathe.
• Injury or illness that affects your vocal cords: The nerves that servers the voice box can get injured during surgery, trauma or tumours can cause vocal cord dysfunction. Surgery on or near to the neck or upper chest can result in damage to the nerves that serve your voice box. Vocal cord dysfunction can be the secondary cause of language disorders.

APHAISA is known as language impairment which leads to dysfunction of a person’s receptive language skills and expressive language skills. In aphasia, one or more area of the brain is damaged. A person’s intelligence is intact in the case of aphasia.

Aphasia is caused due to stroke, brain tumours, traumatic brain injury, damage to the left hemisphere of the brain, illness, etc.

There are different types of aphasia which have different lesions and different forms of language impairment.

• Global aphasia: In global aphasia large area of the brain is affected. In global aphasia person’s more than one function is affected. Functions like spontaneous speech, repetition of words, receptive language skills, and name finding (more than one or two areas at the same time can be impaired.)
• Broca’s aphasia: In Broca’s aphasia person’s word finding ability is impaired, spontaneous speech and repetition of words might be abnormal. Language comprehension is normal in case of broca’s aphasia.
• Wernicke’s aphasia: In Wernicke’s aphasia language comprehension and word finding is impaired. Repetition of words are observed to be abnormal. Spontaneous speech in Wernicke’s aphasia is observed to be fluent. Logorrhea, paraphasia, neologism is sometimes observed in Wernicke’s aphasia.
• Anomic aphasia: In anomic aphasia people have naming difficulty. Fluency is intact but will have difficulty in finding words. Repetitions in spoken language and language comprehension is intact.

Tremendous changes happen due to the injury to the brain. In aphasia people often show improvements in their language and communication abilities in the first few months, even without the intervention. In some cases, recovery is very slow and they require speech and language intervention to regain their communication.

Therapy for aphasia aims to improve communication skills in the person by helping him or her to use the remaining language abilities which is present after the brain injury. One needs to work on restoring language abilities as much as possible. And learn to use an alternative way of communicating. such as alternative augmentative communication, picture communication, or the use of electronic devices.

Speech and language therapy should be included in the treatment plan which would help in focus on the specific needs of the person communication skills for better quality of life. While person can be introduced to group therapy which give better opportunity to use new communication skills in a small-group setting and would help in restoring confidence back.

Where to get help regarding language disorder ?

2nd Floor, 2983, 12th Main Rd, HAL 2nd Stage, Indiranagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560008

To book an appointment for a speech and language therapist visit- https://mpowerminds.com/best-psychiatrist-in-bangalore/