Largest treatment outcome comparison study in history for stuttering in young children

Child and environment directed DCM treatment AS GOOD AS popular Australian LP behavioral treatment

By Caroline de Sonneville-Koedoot, Elly Stolk, Marie-Christine Franken, and Toni Rietveld

The largest singletreatment study of stuttering children in history (199 children) called RESTART, conducted by Erasmus MC and EUR (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) showed that an indirect approach targeting - Demands (the environment) and Capacities (the child’s abilities) treatment (DCM) method for stuttering, is equally effective as a direct behavioral treatment (the Lidcombe Programme). This Dutch study not only established the efficacy of DCM therapy for stuttering after 18 months follow-up (doubling the 9 months follow-up for LP trials), but included four times as many children (199 versus 54). Thus, the Dutch Restart DCM is equally good as the LP, 18 months after treatment onset. While the frequency of stuttering did decrease faster in the first three months in the Lidcombe Treatment group than in the DCM group, within six months and at the end of the study (18 months) , the two groups showed equivalently good recovery from stuttering.

This finding gives HOPE to parents and stuttering children of multiple ways to tackle this disabling condition before it becomes chronic. Since no medical treatment can hope to be 100% effective for ALL people, it is critical that the field continues to explore multiple possible treatments that are effective, especially for children who are not responsive to a first treatment of choice. The paucity of this type of studies underscores the desperate need for more work in this area, especially by teams not tied to the development of a specific approach.

The data suggest that it is premature to recommend a single, specific treatment for children who stutter. Parents of children who stutter who are recommended to start treatment for their child, should be told that two approaches, DCM treatment (cf the Restart protocol) and the Lidcombe program, have been shown to be equally good in the longer term, allowing them to choose a treatment approach that will work for them. The same is true for insurance reimbursement: both researched treatments should be reimbursed.

See: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0133758

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CELEBRITY FOCUS

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From Edward S. Herrington's letter to Southcoasttoday.com

I am writing in response to "The importance of voice" (May 29), which mentioned that famous actor James Earl Jones struggled with stuttering. Another famous voice that you cited was the trademark breathy voice of Marilyn Monroe; however, you did not make mention of the fact that Marilyn Monroe also struggled with stuttering at various points in her life, sometimes very painfully.