Speech therapy can be helpful for many people with mild cognitive impairment, although you shouldn’t expect it to solve or “cure” a person’s difficulties with communicating.
“Speech therapy, especially in the early stages of mild cognitive impairment, can help identify specific communication challenges and offer coping strategies that may help,” says Edgerly. “The goal of therapy is to help individuals preserve communication abilities, support cognitive function, and maintain independence for as long as possible.”
A speech therapist may use many different techniques to assess, and then try to improve, difficulties with communication.
“We first want to know, what’s important to the patient? What are they specifically having difficulties with?” says Klein. Then, she says, formal assessments may be used to get a better picture of the person’s cognitive and communication abilities.
As part of treatment, “We may lead the patient in specific exercises to engage an underlying cognitive skill,” says Klein. That could include exercises focused on immediate memory, delayed memory, or organization. “After that exercise, I like to allow the patient an opportunity to reflect on what went well, what didn’t go well, and how to make improvements. And that can build metacognitive awareness, our ability to think about our thinking.”
Awareness of how you think, Klein says, can help people with mild cognitive impairment activate support strategies that they develop with their speech therapist, such as mental checklists to help remember things or using external reminders like cards or notes. “Strategies will be identified as they’re appropriate for each patient, depending on what’s safe and attainable for them,” she says.
Speech-language pathologists don’t focus only on helping with communication. “We want to address the whole person, not just one skill at a time,” says Klein. That means your treatment plan may include strategies to help with daily activities, such as memory aids, calendars, alarms, and tools to help with food preparation or medication management.
