An evaluation of short-term group therapy for people with aphasia

This paper reports an evaluation of a group therapy intervention conducted with aphasic people (n = 6). The intervention comprised 10 sessions of approximately 90 min duration and included two participants with stuttering difficulties. The therapy programme consisted of communication activities within the group which encouraged sharing of personal experiences, videotaping of role-play activities for self- and group-evaluation and practice tasks completed outside the group. Measures of functional communicative ability, attitudes to communication and psychological adjustment were obtained before and after the intervention. Findings showed significant improvements in communicative competence and attitudes to communication over the course of the intervention. Before the intervention self-esteem and communicative competence were highly intercorrelated. By the end of the therapy sessions the correlation between self-esteem and communicative competence was significantly smaller and was non-significant. This indicates that communicative function was not related to feelings of self-worth by the end of the intervention. Improvements in attitude to communication, greater attendance and completion of assignments were each predictive of reduced levels of depression. There was also evidence that stronger beliefs about the role of personal effort in improving speech were predictive of improvements in communication attitudes. A measure of satisfaction showed extremely positive evaluation of the intervention by participants. It is concluded that shortterm group therapy can produce improvements in communicative abilities and attitudes, and have psychological benefits for participants. Several suggestions for future research are outlined.