Critique and alternative to the biomedical model on stuttering

Abstract

Medicalizing stuttering implies conceiving it as a disease, upset or similar, and therefore provoking secondary negative consequences, as a stereotype that stigmatizes stutterers and brings nothing but a lot of suffering to them. Paradoxically, the medicalization does not proportionate any therapeutic profit and it does not allow to penetrate the nature of stuttering. As a consequence, we hardly find any benefits and on the contrary, we notice an increase in the damage and prejudices to stutterers, such as stigma, stereotype and negative attitudes towards them. We made our fieldwork in the first Spanish self-help groups and virtual communities -in Spanish language-, using qualitative and quantitative techniques and we have obtained amazing results about stutterers´ personal and social identity, the stereotype that stigmatizes, the inefficiency of psychological and speech therapy treatments in short and long term, as well as the imposibility of accepting stuttering completely. We have analysed this information with concepts and theories coming from social sciencies as anthropology, social psychology and sociology; always searching for theoretical and methodological interdisciplinarity and taking note of the complexity of the phenomenon. Because of the results obtained, we propose a new conception, known as “the demedicalization of stuttering”.