Q&A: How to support people who stutter

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Approximately three million people in the United States stutter. Oct. 22 serves as International Stuttering Awareness Day, an occasion dedicated to educating the public on stuttering, highlighting resources available to those who stutter and bringing attention to research into the causes and treatment of stuttering. 

Jonelle Prokopchak, assistant teaching professor of communication sciences and disorders at Penn State, studies how speech-language pathologists can manage stuttering to help improve quality of life. Prokopchak said an important piece of addressing stuttering is expanding people’s knowledge of stuttering, not just in the field, but throughout the public.

Prokopchak spoke about stuttering and how graduate students in the Penn State Speech, Language, and Hearing Clinic are working to help people who stutter address and even embrace their stuttering.

Q: Why do people stutter?

Prokopchak: We know the cause of stuttering involves a combination of genetic, neurological and environmental factors. Stuttering tends to occur more frequently among individuals with a family history of stuttering, and it is more prevalent in males than females.

Q: When in life does stuttering typically emerge?  

Prokopchak: Stuttering typically emerges between the ages of two and four. If a person continues to stutter after the age of five, they are typically more likely to continue to stutter into adulthood.

Q: Is there any difference in addressing pediatric stuttering relative to adult stuttering? 

Prokopchak: When working with people who stutter, we focus on each individual’s treatment history. We look at what they already know about stuttering and what they’ve already worked on regarding their stuttering, so we can either build on that or change the approach.

Children are often unaware that stuttering is happening. Adults are more aware and more impacted by their stutter. That is a big piece that we work on when starting therapy with children — identifying what stuttering looks like and when it is happening versus adults who know when stuttering is going to occur. They can anticipate those stuttering moments.

We help children work on their self-knowledge of stuttering by focusing on their communication and on the emotions associated with their stuttering moments. When they can identify emotional states, a lot of times they are able to stay in tune with their feelings and better predict when they may stutter and how to react to it.

Because adults are more aware, we encourage them to accept their stutter by addressing the emotional piece of stuttering. Anxiety about the way they speak can exacerbate stuttering in adults. Using tools learned in therapy, they can have more control over their stutter, which leads to less anxiety and more effective communication.

Q: Why is it important to address stuttering?

Prokopchak: The stigma around stuttering has largely been very negative. If we can shift the way people view stuttering, people who stutter will feel more comfortable using their voice. Stuttering is not a problem; it may just make communication a little slower.

There are many individuals who are already proud stutterers that communicate with ease and efficiency and do not want to do therapy. On the contrary, there are individuals who are embarrassed by their stutter. The feeling of embarrassment can cause those individuals to avoid speaking situations or only speak with certain people because it bothers them so much. We want to help support people whose stutter poses a personal, educational or professional barrier.

Q: How can a person without a stutter support someone who stutters?

Prokopchak: I encourage everyone to give people who stutter the space and time they need to communicate. Be patient. Patience really goes a long way. Resist the urge to interrupt them or finish sentences on their behalf.

It’s important to avoid telling someone who stutters to “slow down” or “stop stuttering.” These types of statements can increase anxiety and negative feelings in people who stutter, which can lead to more stuttering. Focus on what the person is saying, not how they are saying it.

Keeping these things in mind can help all of us be better allies of people who stutter. We want to shift the perception from viewing stuttering as a problem, or a measure of intelligence, to viewing stuttering as a different way of speaking.

Q: How does the Penn State Speech, Language, and Hearing Clinic help people address stuttering?

Prokopchak: In the Speech, Language, and Hearing Clinic, we offer a variety of services for people of any age who stutter. We have a great program that works with faculty, students and the broader community. We offer individual and group therapy sessions. We start people with individual sessions working on communication, self-advocacy, self-adjustment and resiliency. Then we offer the opportunity to join group sessions so individuals can learn from other people who stutter and work together on those same skills.

We’re also working on an intensive stuttering clinic, which we are hoping to roll out in 2026. This clinic will provide an intensive, modified version of our stuttering program and is designed for people that are strapped for time and cannot attend weekly sessions over the course of a semester. It will consist of the same individual and group session concept, but over a shorter period of time with longer session times.

We want individuals to be comfortable with stuttering. People may come to us with the goal of reducing their stutter or getting rid of it altogether, and in the past, that is how many intervention programs approached stuttering therapy. Now, we place more emphasis on the cognitive affect component of stuttering, changing thought patterns and building resilience, rather than focusing on decreasing the amount of stuttering. In many cases, when an individual accepts their stutter and becomes less embarrassed by it, this naturally reduces the amount of stuttering they experience.

We tie in techniques and strategies that make stuttering a little bit easier — things that reduce secondary behaviors such as ticks, squeezing the hands or blinking the eyes. We do a lot of enhancement strategies that help reduce the physical characteristics of stuttering.

We have individuals come to therapy with a speech language pathologist because we want them to be able to communicate easier and more effectively — that’s our goal.

Q: What is your future vision for people who stutter?

Prokopchak: I want people who stutter to know there are resources and speech language pathologists out there who will provide therapy to help them accept their stutter and communicate more easily and effectively if that is a goal for them.

I think the biggest way to improve anything related to stuttering is to increase knowledge. Not just the knowledge of people who stutter, but the knowledge of the public, of educators and anyone who is around people who stutter. I believe that’s the number one way treatment could be improved — decreasing the stigma and increasing the understanding of how to support people who stutter.