A Comparative Study on the Effectiveness of Homoeopathic intervention over Speech therapy in Speech and Language Disorders among Children

Speech and language development are one of the important developments of a child. Disorders of speech and language can adversely affect a child’s academic, social and personal life. Speech therapy has been widely used for the  improvement of speech and language but alternative complimentary ways of management has not been thoroughly studied even though its relevance in these days are high. The study aims to understand the efficacy of homoeopathic intervention in comparison with speech therapy in managing speech and language disorders in children. It also aims to identify the type of speech and language disorders commonly occurring in children, etiology/ risk factors and  the impact of screen time. For the study children presenting with speech and language disorders will be screened and selected. The  case taking and recording of the problem will be done in a standardized case record format. The subjects will be  equally divided into 3 groups A , B & C with subjects in group A receiving only homoeopathic medicines , subjects in group B receiving only speech therapy and subjects in group C receiving both homoeopathic medicines  and speech therapy. Homoeopathic intervention /medicine will be selected based on individualization and repeated according to the potency. Speech therapy and assessment of speech and language will be done by  the certified speech therapists. Assessment will be done every 3 months for 3 times during the trial period  for improvement by using  one of the following scale specific for the type of speech and language disorder presented and the primary language spoken by the subject  ; receptive- expressive emergent language test and linguistic profile test for language disorders, Malayalam articulation test and  test of articulation in tamil for articulation disorders, stuttering severity instrument-4 for fluency disorder (stuttering).