Psychosocial Outcomes of School-Age Children Who Received the Lidcombe Program

The present study aims to report on the psychosocial outcomes of children aged 6-12 years who did or did not respond to the Lidcombe Program.

Thirty-seven 6- to 12-year-old children participated in a Phase II trial of the Lidcombe Program using video telehealth. Treatment progress was documented using stuttering severity ratings and three psychosocial outcome measures (Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering-School-Age Children, Communication Attitude Test, and Spence Children's Anxiety Scale). We examine the results of these psychosocial outcomes in relation to children who did and did not respond to the program.

Significant improvements were observed across all psychosocial measures, irrespective of responsiveness group. Individual trajectories highlighted heterogeneity, but group data revealed statistically significant reductions in measures of stuttering impact, negative communication attitudes, and anxiety symptoms from pretreatment to 12 months posttreatment, with no evidence of differential effects between responsiveness groups.

Findings suggest that the Lidcombe Program may provide psychosocial benefits beyond stuttering reduction to some children, potentially through the therapeutic alliance fostered between clinicians, children, and families. The Lidcombe Program appears to be psychologically safe and may confer psychosocial advantages for school-age children who stutter, regardless of whether their stuttering partially reduced, stopped, or persisted. Future research should explore longer term maintenance of these psychosocial gains and conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effect of the Lidcombe Program relative to a control group.