Aphasia Treatment – Schuell Stimulation Therapy

  The Schuell stimulation method is one of the most widely used methods to promote the reconstruction and restoration of the damaged speech symbol system by applying strong, controlled auditory stimulation to aphasic patients.  The patient should first have a clearer understanding of his or her occupation, educational experience, life experience, and interests. Then, according to his or her degree and type of aphasia, he or she should repeatedly use topics that are easily acceptable to the patient and give him or her the appropriate stimuli through listening, seeing, touching, and smelling; the criteria, modality, intensity, and teaching materials of the stimuli should be gradual and not overly adventurous. When patients are unable to make correct responses, they should be given corresponding cues, such as gesturing, repeating, reading, speaking, writing, etc. Patients with dysarthria should be demonstrated the mouth shape and tongue position of pronunciation and taught correct pronunciation skills. When formulating the treatment plan, we should choose colorful and vivid contents to increase patients’ interest in receiving stimulation training, be good at grasping patients’ psychology, adjusting the treatment plan according to their psychological changes and mental state on that day, cultivating patients’ habit of active communication, and tapping their potential of speech communication to overcome their low self-esteem and depression.  Schuell stimulation therapy is widely used and effective, especially in the early stage of stroke recovery, through the stimulus-response-feedback loop, it activates the nerve cells with low function in the speech center, increases the number of nerve fibers and strengthens the brain function The compensatory effect has excellent efficacy in restoring the communication ability of aphasic patients!