University of Alberta Edmonton, Canada May 30, 1997

Finding voice: ISTAR programs turns young life around

By Lee Elliott

It was enough to make a grown man cry.

Senator Joseph Landry of New Brunswick is accustomed to public speaking with much larger and tougher audiences than the handful of people assembled at Corbett Hall May 23 to hear seven short speeches.

But after hearing the presentations, Landry wept through his own speech-a relief for the audience who had a few tears of their own to dry. Landry was overwhelmed after hearing seven men speak calmly and smoothly. These men had only two things in common-life-long stuttering problems that made communicating a nightmare, and the three weeks they had just spent in an intensive program at ISTAR (Institute for Stuttering Treatment and Research).

The "before" video of 20-year-old Maurice Bye of Winnipeg is painful to watch. He is a handsome young man, well dressed. But in the video, his struggle and frustration at trying to make himself understood is only too evident.

Stepping to the microphone for his "graduation" address three weeks after the video, he stammers and struggles through his first words. The audience looks down, afraid to listen. It appears the program hasn't helped. Then Bye says clearly, "This is the way I used to speak," and the tears begin.

"Through elementary school I was teased a lot and bugged about my stuttering," says Bye. "I was young. I took it to heart." He says when he was older, he tried to just shrug it off. "Because I stuttered, my self esteem was extremely low and nobody ever took me seriously."

Nobody but his grandfather Larry Desjardins, that is. Desjardins says Bye's mother died of Lou Gehrig's disease before his 18th birthday. That grief and the stuttering combined seemed to make Bye give up. Desjardins says he became a "rebel" and quit school. "He had no confidence in himself." When Desjardins read about the program in a Winnipeg newspaper, he called immediately, then, to his own surprise, persuaded his grandson to try it. Bye had been through another intensive program as a child. He'd tried speech therapy. He had no reason to believe this program would work. His grandmother, Mel, says, "We were so worried if it didn't work out that he'd be so disappointed, he'd be worse than ever."

Bye is anything but disappointed. "I thought it was hopeless," he said in his speech. "But now for the first time, I feel there is hope.My whole life has started to change." Asked afterward what it all means, he said. "I have a true voice and I'm not going to let it go to waste and I'm not going to lose it." Giving his grandmother a quick smile, he adds, "I'm happier than I've ever been."

Senator Landry understands this joy. His own struggle with stuttering has made him determined to see that programs like ISTAR grow. "It's amazing, he said. "Something that I wish I could have found in my day. I'm one who could not read my lessons, and I went from that to reading speeches in the Senate of Canada." In his speech to the Senate April 24, 1997, Landry called for government assistance for the approximately one per cent of Canadians affected by stuttering. "That means 300,000 people," he said. "It translates into enormous human potential. A little like a gold mine that is just beyond reach."

ISTAR shows the world how it's done

Boris, a young PhD student from France who recently graduated from the ISTAR program, tells of phoning the information desk at his university. "I was told my knowledge of the French language had to be assessed first," he said. When he went to the university office and asked to get his I.D. card, the woman asked, "Do you know your name?"

Experiences like these build fears that can debilitate the lives of stutterers as much as their difficulty communicating, says Deborah Kully, executive director of ISTAR. She had one client who actually stopped breathing when he was near a phone. He'd risked his life once, walking 25 kilometres on a winter night when his car stalled-rather than call for help on a phone.

Stutters can develop elaborate avoidance strategies to try to keep their problems hidden, says Kully. One young man habitually missed the first day of class at university so he wouldn't have to introduce himself. Another always planned to be late for meetings so he'd miss the introductions.

The ISTAR approach tackles both the speech difficulties and the avoidance strategies, says Kully. And the success of the combined approach has attracted students worldwide. Of the seven students in a recent graduating class, one came from France, another from Estonia with an interpreter, and a third had moved to Edmonton only a short time ago from Nepal.

Intense work that must be kept up for a lifetime is the key to the program, she says. "It can be deceptive because the improvement is so dramatic. It looks very miraculous.but it is definitely not miraculous. It's achieved after a lot of hard work and it has to be maintained." Students in the program have to practice up to 20 minutes daily to maintain their smooth speech and sometimes return to ISTAR for refresher courses.

Approximately 15 U of A graduate students in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine complete training in the ISTAR program each year. ISTAR is a non-profit society located on campus and supported by the Elks and Royal Purple of Canada. ISTAR treats over 100 patients a year. For more information, call 492-2619.

Folio front page

Office of Public Affairs

University of Alberta