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Symptoms, treatment & support strategies (7 mins)
Symptoms, treatment & support strategies (7 mins)
The first signs
The first signs
People with MJD experience difficulty with their speech. Slow and slurred speech is often an early sign of MJD which, over time, may progress to complete loss of speech. Loss of speech is caused by damage to areas of the nervous system that control the muscles used for speech.
When a person’s MJD is mild or moderate, there will be signs of speech difficulties. These changes will mostly happen when a person is tired, and can include:
a weak cough
a softer sounding voice
slurred or broken speech
a loss of breath to support sounds
dribbling
When a person’s disease becomes more severe, communication becomes more challenging as their speech, gestures and ability to use communication aids deteriorates. At this stage, people can lose their ability to speak altogether. However, a person with MJD, that has lost their speech, can still hear and understand what is being said, but will have difficulties responding using their voice.
📝 Activity
📝 Activity
Click on the 'read' button below to open up the 'communication symptoms, treatment & support strategies' booklet. Click on the arrows (< >) to move through the pages, and then answer the quiz questions to test your understanding.
💡 Key points with the communication board
An alphabet board is a tool that is commonly used by people with MJD to 'augment' (or support) their communication — it is simply a laminated paper copy of the alphabet keyboard, with some other commonly used (or high frequency) conversational words included on it. It is a low-tech assistive communication device that supports people to communicate if they have good literacy skills but have difficulty articulating their words or being understood by people. For it to be effective and useful, both people in the conversation need to be looking at the communication board and spelling out the words together.
Want to know more?
Want to know more?
Select the 'Communication Help Sheet' button to access further information on communication issues that people living with MJD can experience.
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