'Speech' opens window into stuttering treatment

Long before King George VI of Britain helped his country unite to fight Adolf Hitler, he faced his own battle. The enemy: a new technology called radio. “The King's Speech,” just nominated for several Golden Globes awards, depicts the man's struggle with stuttering, an unlikely but very real threat to his ability to rule. You already know there's a happy ending, but communication disorder experts are hoping it'll get even happier once the film reaches the masses.

“The bigger picture is how much buzz it's generating regarding stuttering,” says Tommie Robinson, president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, based in Rockville, Md. It's impossible not to root for the future king (played by Colin Firth) as he samples various therapies of the day, and with the guidance of Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush), finally finds his voice.

In one early scene, an expert encourages the prince to attempt to speak with his mouth full of marbles. Expect giggles from the audience, but it's historically accurate. “It was a common treatment at that time. For some people, it did work,” says Robinson, although he has absolutely no clue why.

Logue's course of treatment, which included a series of vocal exercises and counseling, is much more likely these days. Robinson notes that breath control and slowing down the rate of speech can also be particularly effective tools.

Viewers may imagine that the prince's problems with disparaging family members were the product of a backward era, but current society isn't much more forgiving. “(People who stutter) are being bullied every day,” Robinson adds. And although it's not entirely understood what causes stuttering in the first place it seems to be either genetic, or develop after a physical or emotional trauma getting mocked for messing up only makes symptoms worse. The resulting low self-esteem is often compounded by assumptions that the stutterer is less intelligent, even though stuttering indicates nothing of the sort.

These obstacles hasn't prevented many stutterers from overcoming their difficulties and having careers in the public eye and ear. One of Robinson's favorite examples is Joe Biden. Maybe it's time to get going on a sequel: “The Vice President's Speech.”