News
A Hollywood film is helping to highlight the challenges faced by people with stammers and communication difficulties
10 Jan 2011
The King's Speech, a new film released in the United Kingdom on 7 January, explores how King George VI overcame his own debilitating stammer.
Robert Coe, who runs a Cambridge self-help group for stammerers, said he hoped the film would raise awareness. Mr Coe said:
"It's great news to have someone who stammers portrayed in such a positive way. It's not often that stammering gets coverage in the media - and especially not in film. Usually you only see it when it's used to comedic value, or even used to portray someone with an unstable state of mind."
Robert runs the Cambridge Self-Help Group for Adults who Stammer, and said he hoped the publicity surrounding the release of the film would encourage people to be more open about the condition.
"I hope there will be a greater understanding of stammering, and that people who do stammer will come to understand that there is nothing psychologically or mentally wrong with them and that, as a disability, you can, and should, be able to receive some treatment."
Dysfluency - or a lack of fluency in speech - is an umbrella term for a number of communication difficulties including stammering.
"In this country, 750,000 people stammer,"
Mr Coe said.
Actor Colin Firth, who plays King George VI has spoken at length about his role and has become the focus of the British Stammerers' Association's (BSA) campaign to raise awareness of the condition.
The BSA's chief executive, Norbert Lieckfeldt, spoke to Colin Firth about how he approached the role of the stammering king.
Firth said:
"It is terribly important to me that if you're addressing the real issue like this, I feel I owe it to myself and to anybody who struggles with it to be as authentic as much as I can. It's amazing, if you go into an issue like this, just how many people will tell you I have it, had it, my brother does, my cousin..."
Dysfluency is also thought to affect more than one million children of school age.
To raise awareness of this, and to help to tackle the various forms of speech, language and communication difficulty, Hello: The National Year of Communication , is due to launch at the end of this month.
The National Literacy Trust is one of the over 35 third sector, voluntary and private organisations who form The Communication Trust and will deliver Hello.
You can read more about The King's Speech at:
