City Research Online

Abstract

Purpose: People with aphasia are at risk of becoming depressed, anxious and isolated. They want therapy to focus on improving communication, confidence, and finding ways to live well; family members want to be involved in the therapy process. We aimed to co-design and test a novel intervention (EmotionaL and Language recovery in Aphasia - ELLA) that would address these priorities through integrating two evidence-based therapy approaches: elaborated Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA), a naming therapy, and Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), a psychological therapy.

Method: A series of workshops were held with five people with aphasia (six workshops); three family members (three workshops); and four speech-language pathologists (SLPs) (three workshops). In addition, meetings were held with experts in SFBT and elaborated SFA. This information was analysed using qualitative content analysis and mapped onto a therapy manual. Advisors with aphasia (n=5) and student SLPs (n=4) trialled therapy components for further refinement prior to a proof-of-concept pre-post group study (n=8 participants with aphasia). The therapy was co-delivered by student SLPs supervised by an experienced SLP; participants received on average 14.25 sessions (s.d. 2.25) over seven weeks. The primary clinical outcome was the Communicative Participation Item Bank (CPIB); participants also took part in in-depth interviews post therapy analysed using Framework Analysis.

Results: Themes from the co-design stage included: choosing meaningful therapy targets; integrating impairment and psychological therapy; managing endings; involving family; supporting home practice; dosage and delivery; achieving real-life change. Participants in the proof-of-concept study made significant gains on the CPIB (p=0.006, Cohen’s d=1.37). All participants highly valued the therapeutic relationship and were positive about combining psychological and language components within the same intervention.
Conclusions: ELLA has been designed as a holistic, humanistic language therapy. This study suggests ELLA may be a promising way to enable SLPs to address both emotional and language recovery.

Publication Type:	Article
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics R Medicine > RM Therapeutics. Pharmacology
Departments:	School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Department of Allied Health
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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