Speech and language pathology is a fascinating area, and a job that brings great reward, both personal and monetary. The job of a speech pathologist combines neurology, psychology, therapy, teaching, and performance into a fascinating and dynamic opportunity to work one on one to make a difference in a client or patient’s life. Speech pathology is a term that refers to any disorder of speech or language. It can be as simple as a lisp or stutter, or even terrifying social shyness, or as complicated as the inability to learn and construct proper grammar.

Each speech pathology is unique, and they have a variety of origins. Some speech pathologies have social or psychological origins. Most stutterers, for example, have nothing wrong with the structure of their brain. For some reason, usually relating to some phobia developed while they were learning to speak, stutterers are unable to complete their phrases smoothly. This is usually worse in stressful situations. But, although stuttering is a speech pathology, nothing is physically wrong with the stutterers brain. The role of the speech therapist is half psychologist, half coach, to help the stutterer gain the confidence to talk in public situations.

Unfortunately, more than one speech pathology goes much deeper than that. Traumatic head injury, for example, can cause speech pathology, as can Alzheimers disease, birth defects, and many other conditions. People develop all types of strange and exotic problems as the result of brain damage, and these often result in speech pathology. Sometimes someone can think quite clearly in words, but frustratingly, can no longer articulate his mouth to form them. It takes great patience to cure this speech pathology (when it is curable, which isn’t always) as the brain has to physically rewire itself to make up for the part that was damaged. Other times, someone will lose the use of a whole group of words like, say, the names of tools. Other times, they might have use of all of their words but no longer have a grasp on the rules of grammar.

There are many programs in speech pathology available all over the country, and it is a job that is likely to remain in high demand. Speech language graduate programs are held at many of the most prestigious universities, and benefit from the latest science in neurology, psychology, and linguistics. If you like figuring out puzzles while helping people, or if you are fascinated by the human mind, a speech pathology career might be for you.

I have a friend who went into speech pathology in order to provide help to his nephew who is suffering from stuttering. It seem that having a familiar family member as your therapist works wonder. His nephew now only stutter under extreme stress.