Music therapy

ESSENTIAL in life, language is used daily as a tool of communication. It helps us to express our feelings, our wants and desires, and the questions we have in our minds.

However, there are some who are born with or develop language disorders which makes communication challenging. Children with this disorder find it hard to express themselves or understand messages from others from a young age. This disorder can prove to be detrimental to their development if left untreated.

PATIENT TESTIMONY Four-year-old Mavis was just like any other girl her age until her parents, Nickson and Janette, discovered that their little girl refused to speak. Brushing it off as the typical “late bloomer” syndrome, Mavis could only manage four-word sentences when she enrolled for pre-school. When Mavis’ parents consulted a general practitioner for advice, the doctor reassured the anxious parents that Mavis will eventually attain the appropriate milestones in speech development and there was nothing to worry about.

Not convinced, the parents decided to get a second opinion. They were referred to the International Psychology Centre. Professional psychologists at the centre put Mavis through a proper and acknowledged assessment programme to diagnose her communication and speech difficulties. The test known as the fifth edition (SB5) of the StanfordBinet Intelligence scale was administered by a panel of psychologists .

Diagnosis after an assessment proclaimed that Mavis had a language disorder which started at the tender age of five. A language disorder is characterised as maladaptive speech development, where the patient is not conducive to adaptation in speech development. Mavis scored relatively poorly in the verbal aspects of SB5, which concluded that the psychological disorder affected her ability to read and