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Why people who stammer need to do the talking
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Success of You Tube campaign highlighted at International Stuttering Awareness Day online conference
Leys Geddes, a marketing consultant and copywriter, is also a person who stammers. In a paper for the International Stuttering Awareness Day online conference he reflects on how a strategic response to You Tube 'comedy' videos has raised awareness of stammering.
Leys says a crucial aspect has been his willingness to talk in public and to talk about his stammer. He says, "At the risk of appearing rude to many eminent therapists, it may be that those expert people who kindly speak on our behalf, but do not stutter themselves, can make the whole subject seem a bit antiseptic and impersonal - which is nothing like how life really is if you have a stutter. So we have thought for some time that if we can first address stuttering as a social problem, then the need for professional or medical help will follow much more easily. A bit like alcoholism or mental illness or depression, I guess, where you don't want to be seen to be sloping off to see any kind of shrink until you can talk about whatever it is fairly freely with your friends and colleagues."
He continues, "So it gives us great pleasure and hope to see that when people have 'permission' to talk about stammering, which is what the No Joke media exposure has done in the UK, then a lot of people who stammer are very happy to come out. The change in the 'climate', so to speak, brings the top of the silo closer, and thus makes desensitisation more achievable."
Source: Speaking from the heart
Posted on 09 October, 2007
