Maintenance of speech in Parkinson’s disease: The impact of group therapy

Abstract

The maintenance of communication in Parkinson's disease (PD) requires a long term management plan, due to the progressive nature of the associated communication deficits.While intensive behavioural treatment has been demonstrated to improve speech intelligibility in PD, the effects can decrease over time. People with PD also experience changes in their ability to participate in conversation and everyday communication.Methods to maintain communication after a primary speech treatment are of interest to clinicians and people with PD. The overall aim of this research was to investigate the outcomes of group therapy as a maintenance strategy following the Lee Silverman Voice There was heterogeneity in the participants' response to Loud and Proud that was not explained by dysarthria severity. Refinements to Loud and Proud were recommended following this Phase I study, to better target intelligibility, communicative effectiveness, and QOL.In Study II conversational data from a purposeful sample of six participants in Study 1 were examined using a mixed-methodology. Recorded conversations between the PD participants and the researcher obtained before and after the Loud and Proud intervention were investigated using Conversation Analysis (CA) as the primary methodology.