We’re a Statistic like Everyone Else, So What are the Numbers?

I’d like to think we’re not alone (we’re meaning stutterers). I am completely aware that they are many other individuals out their who stutter. After all, I had to share speech therapy sessions for four years with a guy named Alex; he had a more more severe stutter than myself. I was thinking about Alex the other day because I was trying to think of people I knew who stutter. Him and another boy were the only two I could think of. Both Male. And the pondering begins….

So being intrigued by the most trivial things my mind stumbles upon, I had to look up the numbers corresponding to stuttering. If I didn’t, I would have bothered me. So sitting down in my computer chair I used the most practical approach to finding my statistics, Google. In the search engine I Typed “stuttering statistics” and “stuttering statistics gender” in hopes of satisfying my curiosity. Here are some of the statistics I found about individuals who stutter:

It effects 4 to 5 percent of people worldwide, and 1 percent of the United States population

Okay, that doesn’t seem like very many people right? 1 percent of the U.S population is more than 3 million people. Not very many comparatively. But this makes me wonder who they are considering as a “Stutterer”. I mean, there are different degrees of stuttering, what severity do you have to be at to make this statistic. Am I apart of it? Probably.

75 percent of the children who stutter will eventually outgrow of it by adulthood.

That’s a very big percentage. But that makes sense to me. I used to work in childcare centers and preschools. Many, if not most, of the little ones had a slight stammer. I always thought of that as a part of the process of their natural speech acquisition; as you learn how to talk better and better, a child’s speech should ultimately improve. Well not every mini-stammer grows out of it. Those 5 percent in the world who didn’t can tell you.

This one struck odd to me: Speech therapy does appear to help an individuals self esteem.

Speech therapy had a pretty significant impact on my self esteem, but I don’t necessarily think it helped my self esteem at all. I dreaded having to go to speech therapy. To me, it was embarrassing. I never wanted to admit where I was going because I didn’t want my classmates to look at me differently. I was ashamed. Therefore, the idea and process of going to speech therapy always seemed to damper my self esteem. This statistic is just silly!

The theory is that with decreased dopamine levels, stuttering decreases. Likewise, with an increase in dopamine levels, stuttering increases. This would explain why those who stutter have “good days and bad days.”

This was very realistic to me. When I am stressed or very excited about something, my stuttering increases greatly. On the other hand, when I’m relaxed or sleepy, my fluency then increases. I definitely have good and bad days. There are those days when I feel like I should just not talk because it was too much of an effort. And then I have those days when I completely forget that I have a stammer.

Stuttering begins in boys twice as often as it does in girls, but girls recover at a higher rate, such that males outnumber females in persistent stuttering by a ratio of 5:1.

To me, all this says is that many more men stutter than women. I guess I am one of the rare privileged women to obtain that crazy linkage on my 21 chromosome giving me my staple stutter.  (Another Statistic I found explains the biology behind how a linkage on a females 21 chromosome may be a factor and/or cause of a stutter). But if you thought about all the people who you have met who stutter, are most of them male? Or does that just happen to be my experience?

Individuals do not stutter when they sing.

This ones kind of silly, but true! A least for me.

There is actually a lot of research and discussion on stuttering/stutters. I guess a stammer is a fascinating thing, I certainly think so.

Here are the articles where these stats came from, enjoy:

http://www.microarraybulletin.com/community/article.php?p=192

http://www.peaceandhealing.com/stuttering/index.asp