Forgive my English, I try to translate a simple but very inspiring story:

One day, a guy who has stutter was lost. He walked pass a convenience shop and asked an old man who was drinking beer in front of the shop,’ Do…u…know…where…the…MTR..station…is..?.. the old man pointed the direction without even said a word. This stuttering guy thought that the old man was too rude and so he just walked towards to pointed direction without saying thanks.

The boss of the shop saw the whole thing. He came out and asked the old man why he was so rude, not even said a word to this guy. The old man stuttered, ‘my…stuttering…is..even…worse..than…his…if…I.. answered…with..stuttering…he..would…think…that…I’m…making…fun..of…him…I…would..rather…be…seen…as…rude…than…he…mistakes…that…I…am…laughing…at…him…and…create…troubles…..’

It is a very old story..probably it means nothing to lots of people.

But then, nowadays, who would still care about others’ feelings more than one’s own? Who could be willing to sacrifice a little just to make someone’s day better? People always say we are human. Being selfish is a norm, is by nature. Again, what is norm? 1 million people making the same mistake, does it mean the mistake is not a mistake anymore?

Same theory applies to business, to relationship, to family…People stop caring, stop loving, stop feeling…

No wonder those suicide groups and forums (like 100 ways to commit suicide, how to commit suicide without pain) are so popular and attract thousands of people around the world. It’s not cultural, we, as human, are the same regardless races. Without love, people are skeletons who live in pain

I asked manufacturers of the SpeakEasy and SmallTalk about the cost of their devices ($5k and $1.6k respectively). They (Thomas and Alan) were nice to respond promptly with the following reasons. Basically the price is not driven by the manufacturing cost but rather by the small size of the market.

See, both these companies are for-profit manufacturers whose sole or primary income comes from anti-stuttering devices. So, if I were to chose this as my sole source of income — I would not have any other choice but keep prices high enough to sustain my salary.

Well, I don’t. I already have a job and my driving force is a compassion to those who stutter. My personal experience inspires me, my training enables me.

The primary objective of this paper is to determine to what extent disturbances in the fluency of language production of children who clutter might be related to, or differ from difficulties in the same underlying processes of language formulation seen in children with learning disabilities. It is hypothesized that an increase in normal dysfluencies and sentence revisions in children who clutter reflect different neurolinguistic process to those of children with learning disabilities. To test this idea, 150 Dutch speaking children, aged 10;6 to 12;11 years, were divided in three groups (cluttering, learning difficulties and controls), and a range of speech and language variables were analysed. Results indicate differences in the underlying processes of language disturbances between children with cluttered speech and those with learning disabilities. Specifically, language production of children with learning disabilities was disturbed by problems at the conceptualizator and formulator stages of Levelt’s language processing model, whilst language planning disturbances in children who clutter were considered to arise due to insufficient time to complete the editing phase of sentence structuring. These findings indicate that children who clutter can be differentiated from children with learning disabilities by both the number of main and secondary story plot elements and by the percentage of correct sentence structures.

from the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology

Conclusions
Procedurally, the Lidcombe Program is viable for school-age children and parents report enjoyment in administering it. There appears to be a treatment effect that can be attained in a reasonable number of clinical hours. These results compel continued exploration with young school-aged children in subsequent Phase II and III studies.

from Journal of Fluency Disorders

Last week I spent sometime (re)searching various options for mobile signal processing. The findings are quite encouraging: there is a number of chips that can be used for our purpose.

Here is a brief summary of my findings:

• there is a chip in Hong Kong that can be re-used without much of the firmware modification,
• I also found several general purpose IC,
• and finally, there is a family of very powerful powerful enough general-purpose chips but the codding for them is a ted bit involved.

What I liked about all these options is that the cost of the parts is below a few hundred dollars.

Details are in the follow up posts.

Dear Fellows,

let me start with this — I know first-hand all the pain, suffering, and humiliation of being a stutterer and let me cut to the chase: There are devices that help alleviate stuttering. They seem to work on a sizable fraction of stutterers particularly on those with a severe condition. My search for such a device gave me several options that seem to have acceptable success rate: SpeakEasy ($5,000),  SmallTalk($2,500), and Fluency Enhancer ($1,600). But why are they  so expensive?

Being a scientist and a technical person (PhD and years of postdoctoral research in particle physics) I will try to answer this question: how much does it really cost to make such a device?

First things first — math: The technology behind these miracles is a so-called altered (delayed and frequency-modified) auditory feedback (aka AAF), i.e. speaker’s voice is returned into his/her ear after it goes through a delay line (typically 100 milliseconds) and a voice altering processor (pitch shift, frequency masking, etc. ). While mathematically it is a more or less simple transformation (FFT),  it is computationally intensive to do it in a real time for a stand alone device.

The man in this video is Rechaud Bell. He is 31 and when the first part of the video was made, around November 2008, he had a stutter which had affected him since he was a child.

Towards the end of 2008 Rechaud attended a seminar by life coach Tony Robbins and as a result his stutter became a thing of the past. Robbins has been known to rid people of speech impediments within a matter of minutes in come cases. With Rechaud the transformation was documented on camera and is to feature in an upcoming TV special.

How Robbins achieved this change in Rechaud I will leave, for the moment, to be revealed in the TV documentary.

I came across Rechaud in December 2008 – a month or so after his interaction with Robbins. It was the Date with Destiny seminar week held by Robbins only twice a year worldwide. Towards the end of the six days, as participants were preparing life-affirming goals, some were invited to go on stage and announce their mission statement before 3,000 people.

Rechaud, the man who had stuttered since he was so young, was the first up and he ‘nailed it’ first time. He was so clear and articulate that even Robbins was taken aback. Rechaud proved it was no fluke, repeating his mission a few times more with even greater passion and direction.

For me, watching in the audience that day in Orlando, Florida, it was an uplifting moment and an example of how a transformation can be achieved and alter someone’s life so quickly and so fully.

Since the mid-1990s I have studied what Tony Robbins teaches, and I’ve attended a number of his live events. He has impacted my life for the good in so many ways that this single blog entry can not cover. In the days and months ahead I will share some of that personal story.

For now, watch again Rechaud on this video and be inspired.

(By the way, on YouTube some of Rechaud’s own personal videos on this topic can be found under the name Iusedtostutter)

. Speech and Language specialists deal with humans speech, language, voice and swallowing problems, difficulties or disorders and treat them in health care establishments, like hospitals and clinics, through private practice or in educational facilities like schools.

The wide concept of communication includes non-verbal like facial and body expression and gesture, language with its phonology, morphology, semnatics and syntax parts, recptive language like reading, expressive language (writing) and finally, voice, articulation, intonation, resonance, intensity and fluency as parts of speech. Speech pathology referrs also at the pharyngeal and oral aspects of swallowing, not including the oeshophageal side, which is mainly a digestive system issue..

There is a wide range of therapies in speech and language pathology, including physical exercise and practice, use of methods that target the improvement of communication, using various visual and audio devices and means..
Speech language pathologists educate and counsel people regarding acceptance, adaptation, and decisions about communication and swallowing. They offer a wide range of services, mentioning not only the prevention and treatment of the speech and language problems and disorders, but also put in use prosthetic devices for communication and swallowing, like speaking valves and electrolarynges, they advocate for individuals through community awareness on communication problems, including the elimination of social barriers. The SLPs and SLTs participate in the treatment of auditory disorders which often are related to a speech problem.
The duties of a speech pathologist include treating disorders in individuals of all ages, from infants to the elderly; performing swallowing and feeding evaluation; identifying normal and abnormal swallowing anatomy and physiology; developing treatment plans; providing treatments and documenting the progress; providing teaching and counseling to individuals and their families; providing differential diagnostic information for conditions other than communication disorders; educating other professionals on the needs of individuals with swallowing and feeding disorders; serving as an advocate for persons with impaired communication. Usually older persons are unable to travel to the speech therapists, so speech pathologists must be prepared to go to a variety of community sites to perform the required screenings.

A professional speech language pathologist must:
- Detect and diagnose speech or communication problems and conditions.
- Directly adress and provide treatment for all communication and swallowing problems and concerns, by using a wide range of service delivery methods.
- Investigate and research speech pathology disorders for science purposes.
- Participate in the education of other speech pathology specialists.
- Coordinate service programs and manage cases.
- Administer and manage clinical and academic programs.
- Educate and provide in-service training to families, caregivers, and other professionals.
- Participate in outcome measurement activities and use data to guide clinical decision making and determine the effectiveness of services provided in accordance with the principles of evidence-based practice.
- Train, supervise, and manage speech-language pathology assistants and other support personnel.
- Specifically act in prevention of speech and language disorders by promoting healthy lifestyle principles

Few days ago, I did a post on being positive and kinda carried away with that “boasting” time when I penned down my thoughts. I wanted this post to be a critical one with that idyllic euphoria of “Attitude is everything” scribble.

Maybe this positive thinking does have some effect on our physiology. Although our conscious mind is aware that the underlying emotions are pretty much congruent with the reality, but we are always taught to dress the wounds without treating the actual cause. To put it on skeptical terms, this “Positive Thinking” is a cheap “legal high”!

So, what did this “legal high” has done to me in the last couple of days? Well, to be honest, I kinda felt better. I did some stuff which even now I still get some butterflies in my stomach viz., using the telephone! For a stutterer, it’s pretty daunting. But, my audacity of hope that I will do better, did manage to get me an interview for a part-time job as a “Customer Service Assistant”. Now, to be critical, does that mean I didn’t face any setback? Nope, I did stutter pretty heavily when I did that cold-calling because I didn’t know what to expect from those people? Imagine the situation like going to a battlefield with your hands tied. I was in that kinda situation. Whatever, I felt much better after every call. I kinda became narcissitic!!!

Jokes apart, you guys gotta try out this “feeling good about yourself” thing. It’s there within us. Just like how we could miss out the SMS alert tone of an important text message, yet taking the necessary steps as directed by that message when we find about it later. We need these kinds of little “hope” shots to see what we might have missed out and take some actions to steer us back to our goals.

All in all, it was a rough week with just one good thing. But, hey, this positivity coupled with a definite action-plan could do something in our lives. Even though, it’s tough to maintain during a rough patch.

I’m still skeptical whether to ascribe this little success entirely to my positivity (like all the “Attitude is everything” fellas ), when my actions have done the trick.

What do you think? Positivity or Actions? Which is the right thing?

Background: Clinicians rely on parents to provide information regarding the onset and development of stuttering in their own children. The accuracy and reliability of their judgments of stuttering is therefore important and is not well researched.

Aim: To investigate the accuracy of parent judgements of stuttering in their own children’s speech when compared with judgements made by the parents of normally fluent children and experienced clinicians.

Methods & Procedures: Twenty parents of children who stutter made judgements of stuttering during repeated presentations of 3-min audio-visual samples of their children. Twenty control parents of children (age and gender matched) who do not stutter also assessed the children who stutter speech samples.

Outcomes & Results: The parents of both the children who stutter and those who do not stutter displayed high levels of judgement accuracy (parents, of children who stutter percentage agreement mean (standard deviation) = 90.9 (6.02); parents of children who do not stutter = 86.4 (9.7)) and consistency (90.3-90.6%) in judging stuttering in young children. But the parents of children who stutter showed significantly higher levels of accuracy (t(59) = 4.63, p<0.0001; d = 0.8) in judging stuttered intervals than the children who do not stutter parents.

Conclusions & Implications: Parents of children who stutter may be both accurate and reliable in identifying brief intervals of speech containing stuttering and non-stuttering in their own children.

from the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders

Background: Stuttering is prone to strike during speech initiation more so than at any other point in an utterance. The use of auditory feedback (AAF) has been found to produce robust decreases in the stuttering frequency by creating an electronic rendition of choral speech (i.e., speaking in unison). However, AAF requires users to self-initiate speech before it can go into effect and, therefore, it might not be as helpful as true choral speech during speech initiation.

Aims: To examine how AAF and choral speech differentially enhance fluency during speech initiation and in subsequent portions of utterances.

Methods & Procedures: Ten participants who stuttered read passages without altered feedback (NAF), under four AAF conditions and under a true choral speech condition. Each condition was blocked into ten 10 s trials separated by 5 s intervals so each trial required ‘cold’ speech initiation. In the first analysis, comparisons of stuttering frequencies were made across conditions. A second, finer grain analysis involved examining stuttering frequencies on the initial syllable, the subsequent four syllables produced and the five syllables produced immediately after the midpoint of each trial.

Outcomes & Results: On average, AAF reduced stuttering by approximately 68% relative to the NAF condition. Stuttering frequencies on the initial syllables were considerably higher than on the other syllables analysed (0.45 and 0.34 for NAF and AAF conditions, respectively). After the first syllable was produced, stuttering frequencies dropped precipitously and remained stable. However, this drop in stuttering frequency was significantly greater (approximately 84%) in the AAF conditions than in the NAF condition (approximately 66%) with frequencies on the last nine syllables analysed averaging 0.15 and 0.05 for NAF and AAF conditions, respectively. In the true choral speech condition, stuttering was virtually (approximately 98%) eliminated across all utterances and all syllable positions.

from the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders

Stuttering in toddlers or children is a not unusual issue. Whatever what, this makes oldsters customarily get over concerned questioning their kid’s brain development and makes them concerned and concerned on a possible stammering, which may affect kid’s future development.

Well, I have some exciting news!

Recently I have found this awesome language therapy program that provides a opportunity for curing stammering to toddlers.

The reality is that stuttering in toddler is totally natural. As the child’s young brain accumulates more and more info daily he becomes more assured of himself and of his abilities. With all that, there are occasions when the toddler is just wanting too much, having as result a speech disorder .

In the development of child’s speech talents, he can often provokes himself in trying new sentences or words. As his brain is not necessarily ready to provide these sentences instantly, his speechlanguage starts to hamper as the baby is hunting for words. More precisely said, the brain has issues working at the same pace with the muscles and nerves that control speech. This kind of stuttering is completely normal and will often fade away as the kid grows.

When stuttering in children might be a problem :

Not all stutter traces vanish with time. If you encounter any of the next behavioral or speech patterns in a toddler, it may be a sign of possible speech issue that wishes stuttering therapy :

* Excessive extension of sounds (‘ccccccan I have wwwwwater?’ ).
* Syllabile repetition (‘can I haveget wa-wa-wa-water?’ ).
* Substitution of a puny vowel for a stronger one in syllable repetitions (‘can I have wuh-wuh-wuh-water?’ )
* signs of intense fight and stress when your youngster is making an attempt to speak.
* Avoidance of speaking because of the difficulty associated.
* loud talking and/or loudness as the kid ‘hangs’ on a word or syllable.

Noticing these marks does not always imply your toddler will stutter forever. Many cases of stuttering resolve themselves with age.

If your youngster begins stammering, remember to always keep levels of stress as small as possible. Talk to your youngster in a calm manner and create an atmosphere of smooth, calm conversation. Your child should keep exercising speech in a funny way : making up rhymes, singing songs and playing speech involving games. Ensure you give them your undivided attention and convey to them that you are {listening|paying attention| to what your youngster has to assert, permitting them to express their thinking.

What to avoid :

– Never finish a stutterer’s sentences, even when you know what he is getting ready to say.
– Do not attempt to oblige your child to stop stammering by asking him or her to repeat the sentence’without stammering this time’. This will not work, is humiliating and will severely
hurt self-esteem. because that, you’ve got to ensure you never appear let down or irritated by the stuttering.

Stuttering treatment in toddlers

babies who show evidence of middle to severe speech disorder, need to be seen by a lecture specialist. Most examples of stuttering can however be treated to some degree by behavior and/or speech therapy. Many methods are available, more or less effective.

Having a stuttering problem, I did extensive research effective cures for stammering. That’s how I recently founddicovered a revolutionary new stammering cure alternative that I would like to tell you about. Take a look this stuttering treatment for children and adults program which successfully helped me get rid of my stammering completely in less than two months.

Additional resources

Toddler Stuttering – Causes and Treatment
Child Stuttering A New SpeechTherapy
Speech Therapy Program For Child Stuttering

Stuttering in toddlers or kids is a not unusual problem. Whatever what, this makes oldsters usually get over concerned , interrogating their child’s brain development and makes them worried and concerned on a possible stammering, that might affect child’s future growth.

Well, I have some great news!

Recently I have discovered this revolutionary language therapy program that offers a chance for treating stuttering to babies.

The reality is that stuttering in child is completely natural. As the toddler’s young brain accumulates more and more information every day he becomes more confident of himself and of his skills. With all that, there are times when the baby is simply wanting too much, causing his already intensively busy brain to hamper .

In the development of child’s speech abilities, he’ll frequently provokes himself in trying new sentences or words. As his brain is not always ready to provide these sentences instantly, his speechlanguage starts to hamper as the toddler is looking for words. To put it shortly, the brain has problems synchronizing with the muscles and nerves that take care of speech. This kind of stuttering is completely benign and will often be gone as the child grows.

When stuttering in children may be a preoccupation :

Not all stutter traces vanish in time. If you spot any of the next behaviour or speech patterns in a toddler, it might be an indication of possible speech problem that desires stuttering treatment :

* disproportionate extension of sounds (‘ccccccan I get some wwwwwater?’ ).
* Syllabile repetition (‘can I haveget wa-wa-wa-water?’ ).
* Substitution of a feeble vowel for a better one in syllable repetitions (‘can I get wuh-wuh-wuh-water?’ )
* signs of extreme fight and stress when your child is attempting to speak.
* Avoidance of talking because of the problems encountered.
* loud talking and/or loudness as the kid ‘hangs’ on a word or syllable.

seeing these traits does not always imply your baby will stutter forever. Many cases of stuttering resolve themselves in time.

If your child begins stuttering, remember to always keep levels of stress as small as possible. Talk to your youngster in a calm manner and create an atmosphere of nice, calm conversation. Your kid should keep exercising speaking in a entertaining way : making up rhymes, singing songs and playing speech involving games. Make sure you give them your undivided attention and convey to them that you are {listening|paying attention| to what your youngster has to point out, permitting them to express their thoughts.

What not to do :

– Never/ever finish a stutterer’s phrases, even if you know what she is getting ready to speak.
– Do not attempt to make your child to stop stammering by asking him to copy the sentence’without stammering this time’. This can not work, is shaming and will severely
hurt self-esteem. For much the same reason, you’ve got to ensure you never appear let down or frustrated by the stuttering.

Stuttering treatment in toddlers

Children who show signs of middle to grim stuttering, need to be examined by a lecture consultant. Most instances of stammering can however be treated to some degree by behavioral and/or speech therapy. Many strategies are available, more or less effective.

Having a stuttering problem, I did extensive research effective speech therapies. That’s how I recently founddicovered a astonishing new speech therapy method that I would like to tell you about. Click here to learn about this speech therapy program, which successfully helped me get rid of my stammering completely in just a couple of months.

In a prior study (Newman & Bernstein Ratner, 2007), we examined the effects of word frequency and phonological neighborhood characteristics on confrontation naming latency, accuracy and fluency in adults who stutter and typically-fluent speakers. A small difference in accuracy favoring fluent adults was noted, but no other patterns differentiated fluent speaker responses from those obtained from the adults who stutter. Because lexical organization or retrieval differences might be more easily observed in less mature language users, we replicated the experiment using 15 children who stutter (ages 4;10 16;2) and age-and gender-matched peers. Results replicated the earlier study: the two groups of participants showed strikingly similar patterns of responses based on word frequency and neighborhood characteristics. There were also no differences in naming accuracy overall between the two groups. Given our results and those of other researchers who have explored the impact of neighborhood variables on lexical retrieval in people who stutter, we suggest that differences between language production in PWS and fluent speakers are not likely to involve atypical phonological organization of lexical neighborhoods.

from Journal of Fluency Disorders

I have often thought over the years that my stutter has no logic.    Sometimes it is everywhere around you and you can’t say a word without it controlling you.  Then a short while later, the speech can be fluent.      Most stammerers can talk freely when they are alone, but although I found that also to be the case, there were occasions when I would stammer with only the walls for company.

I realised many years ago that rational thought with regard to my stammer was a wasted thought.    It is very easy to over-analyse a stammer, and I began to stop even trying to do that.

However, there is an aspect to my stammer that is hard to ignore completely and seems to be completely contrary to logic and rational belief.   It is generally accepted by most people, especially those with personal experience of stammering, that stammering is more prevalent for people in potential nervous situations.

Having to talk in front of a number of people, including making presentations is often perceived as being a nightmare situation for stammerers, and is a situation that most stammerers will avoid at all costs because of the total embarrassment involved with stammering in public.

For most of my life as a stammerer, that has been the case for me as well.  Everything so far sounds very logical, until I have experienced something weird in the last couple of years.

Put me in front of an audience, be it at a conference or a meeting, and my stammer disappears.  A situation which should scare me to death has the opposite impact and I have this feeling of calm come over me, and the whole notion of stammering is not in my mind.   I cannot explain this, but it is true.  Ten minutes later, in a private conversation and my stammer may re-surface,

I actually have a potential explanation for this, but it still doesn’t really make sense.    I have become more comfortable by having some experience in those situations, and when I was first exposed to those situations it was a very different story.      I have got better with experience, and I think the lesson is that there is nothing to be scared of.   Do it once, and you are terrified, but by the 4th or 5th time, it is different.

It is no different from practising at anything, we as humans have the ability to improve by repeating things be it playing sports, or be it something as seemingly simple as talking.

Just because it works for me, does not work that it will work for other people but the turning point in my life was when I decided not to hide anymore but to confront things.   To say when ‘I decided’ is probably not correct either, as I was put in positions by people that believed in me, and gave me opportunities and I’ve been very lucky to have that happen to me, but equally I believe they gave me the chance as I showed something that could be believed it.

Having a stammer can teach us good habits sometimes, such as perseverance.  A stammerer who gives up, is one who hides and never lives their life.   Living with a stammer is a great life lesson and treats us to be grateful for what we do have, and not to focus on what we won’t have.   It often takes a long while to come to that realisation, but having a stammer has taught me a lot even though it continues to have little logic, and still totally mystifies me.

Let us turn gratefully away for a moment from the sometimes sorry spectacle of the present day, and let me introduce the first of what I think will have to be  a very short series : Old Rossallians on YouTube.

This is my favourite OR of all - Patrick Campbell – in action on Call My Bluff from some time in the 1970s.

Campbell doesn’t seem to have greatly enjoyed his time at the school (I think he described it as “a notoriously Spartan school in the North of England where the drains blocked at high tide“).  His father was a notable Irish barrister (not Barrista) and his Grandfather – the first Baron Glenavy  - Baron Glenavy was an even more eminent Irish jurist, being successively the Attorney General, Solicitor General and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in the years before partition and after it the first President of the Irish Senate – Seanad Ireann.  I seem to remember, in fact, that Patrick Campbell had quite an amusing anecodete about the anti-Partition faction of the IRA trying to burn the family home down.

On the show I don’t think it’s too fanciful to see his performance as a parody – almost – of the old style of advocacy his father and grandfather might have employed, but which, presumably, his speech impediment must have prevented him making use of professionally (even if he’d had the inclination, which I don’t think he did).  There always seemed to be a slight gleam in his eye as he leant back in his chair in triumph having given his definition of the word, knowing that no-one would be so ill-mannered as to admit that they hadn’t understood a word of it.  I particularly like it here when he says “I can’t do an English accent”.

My liking for Campbell was partly due, I think, to the fact that as a child I had a slight stammer, though mine was of the milder Derek Nimmo-as-silly-ass-clergyman variety.  The only words I really had difficulty with were those beginning with H, which may have contributed to an unquestioning nature.

Those of us who mourn the passing of this rather more leisurely and amateurish syle of TV presentation will note sadly the presence of a serpent in this happy Eden, sitting alongside Frank Muir – not the Minister for the Elderly and Infirm, but the one introduced as the “Disc Jockey and Motor Racing Driver”.

I hope you can see my show I do every Friday at 7 pm CST and ends at 8 pm CST. It deals with stuttering of which I have had since age 4. I am almost 40 years old. I want to impress on people the importance of the fact if you are one of those who stutter, its not that big of a deal. Deal with it and focus on the positvies and strengths you have. Everyone has them. Some are harder to find then others but they are their. Check out my live show I do at http://www.livevideo.com/liveshow/StutteringSteve

As part of International Stuttering Awareness Day on 22nd October, there is an online conference entitled - “STUTTERING: More Than a Tangled Tongue,  which started on October 1, 2009.  The online conference itself is freely available and can be acccessed from: http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster/stutter.html

Yesterday was National Stammering Awareness Day. A conference was held in Dublin to mark the event. See the Irish Stammering Association website for more information: http://www.stammeringireland.ie/news.html

The spectrum of risk and concomitant factors in stuttering is generally thought to be wide and heterogeneous. However, only a few studies have examined these factors using information from large databases. We examined the data on 11,905 Swiss conscripts from 2003. All cases with high psychiatric screening scores indicating “caseness” for a psychiatric disorder were excluded, among them potential malingerers, so that 9,814 records remained. The analyses rely on self-reported information about stuttering in childhood, problems at birth, problems in school, mental disorders of parents and relatives, childhood adversity and socio-demographic information. Statistical modelling was done using logistic regression and path analysis models. Risk factors determined in the logistic regression include premature birth, probable attention deficit hyperactive disorder, alcohol abuse of the parents, obsessive–compulsive disorder in parents and relatives, having a disabled mother and having a parent from a foreign country. There is no overwhelmingly strong risk factor; all odds ratios are about 2 or below. In conclusion, large databases are helpful in revealing less obvious and less frequent risk factors for heterogeneous disorders such as stuttering. Obviously, not only secondary analyses, but also systematical large scale studies would be required to complete the complex epidemiological puzzle in stuttering. An extensive examination of young adults who were initially assessed in childhood might provide the most promising design.

from the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience