Foreign Accent Syndrome: A rare category of mental disorder


Foreign accent syndrome is classified as a rare medical state in which patients develop speech patterns that are visualized as a foreign pronunciation.

Major causes of developing foreign accent syndrome are trauma, head injury, migraine, Multiple sclerosis, Conversion disorder or developmental issues.  It is fundamentally a speech disorder that causes abrupt changes to speech. 

Speech changes mainly include:
-       Unusual prosody, including equal and excess stress (especially in multi-syllabic words)
-       Consonant substitution, deletion, or distortion
-       Voicing errors (i.e. bike for pike)
-       Trouble with consonant clusters
-       Vowel distortions, prolongations, substitutions
-       Joining wrong sentences together





It is documented in psychological studies that Foreign Accent Syndrome strikes on person due to some impairment to specific areas of the brain that deal with the production of speech sounds and speech patterns.
To diagnose Foreign Accent Syndrome, many medical professionals, neurologists, psychologists, and speech-language recognize symptoms and expose psychological or physical trauma. Psychologists may look beyond a patient’s physical symptoms to language exposure, education, and travel experience. They use speech and language tests, speech-language to understand patterns of FAS. After diagnosis, psychologists may recommend treatment on the basis of symptoms, conditions, and experiences of person.


Treatment for FAS:

Treatment depends on the symptomatic condition of patient. If there is a brain injury, stroke or haemorrhage the main treatment goal should be to treat the condition first.

Other treatment techniques include counselling from a psychologist which will help to overcome the awkwardness and live in society more confidently.
Speech therapy can help to bring a change in the accent and patient can speak in the native accent again.

It is recommended to go for regular health check-ups and to keep blood pressure under control. Patient must exercise regularly and keep a check on weight. They must avoid alcohol and smoking.

To wrap up, FAS is an unusual neurological syndrome which impact on speech of person. People grip in this syndrome due to principally after a stroke or brain injury.

Important: This article is developed through environmental information, academic experience and personal view of writer. Writer is not responsible for any disagreement.

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