Speech Therapy Care in Mental Illnesses – Theoretical Issues

The article focuses on the theoretical frame of the speech therapy care problem in various mental illnesses. It presents psychiatric disorders particularly associated with speech and communication problems and diversifies the character of speech disorders in psychiatry, indicating that they can oscillate between variously intensified language pathology and different ways of thinking and speaking; as such, they may be permanent or may disappear spontaneously after the episode of the disease is managed. The study defines the relationship between speech and mental disorders, and lists their short- and long-term effects in mental illnesses. Subsequently, it proceeds to circumscribe the place of a speech therapist in an interdisciplinary team, specifies what the logopaedic diagnosis in the process of a mental disorder is, and indicates other roles of a speech therapist in the broadly understood diagnostic and therapeutic process, e.g. the preventive one. The article formulates general goals and guidelines for speech therapy in mental disorders and discusses those aspects of the treatment which are closely related to the patient and the place of speech therapy care. The article concludes that speech pathologists in psychiatry have a chance to consolidate their position. The conditions which have to be met in order to do so are: the profound description and interpretation of speech disorders in psychiatry, the balanced assessment of diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities, and cooperation within an interdisciplinary team.