CONWAY — Brent Gregg, director of the University of Central Arkansas Stuttering Clinic, loved The King’s Speech so much that he saw it three times.
“First, it was personal, then it was professional, and then it was just, I want to see it again,” Gregg said, laughing. “The story itself and the disorder are both so intriguing.”
The Academy Award-winning movie is based on the true story of King George VI of England’s struggle with stuttering, or stammering, as the British call it.
Gregg, who also serves as interim chairman of the UCA Speech-Language Pathology Department, is thrilled that the movie has brought attention to stuttering — one of the disorders he’s been trying to help people with for years.
Immediately after the movie was released, Gregg started getting more phone calls from people wanting information about stuttering.
The UCA Stuttering Clinic — the only one in the state — has 15 clients this semester.
Most university-based speech clinics see three to four stuttering patients a year, Gregg emphasized.
UCA’s clients come from “all four corners of the state,” he added.
“We went through kind of a lull from late fall to early spring,” Gregg said. “Since the movie’s come out, I get calls not only from speech pathologists, but from grandmothers of kids who stutter, ... and I’ve had more of the adolescent, adult population seeking help.”
Within the field of speech pathology, the movie has generated an enthusiastic response, he said.
“It was a very good representation of the problem; I was extremely pleased with how accurately they portrayed it,” he said. “[King George VI’s] attitudes, anxiety, frustrations — all of that — was really, really well-portrayed.”
Also realistic were the scenes with King George VI receiving therapy from “less-than-qualified clinicians,” Gregg said, and being made to do things like stuff marbles in his mouth to strengthen the muscles.
Treatment is “not marbles in the mouth, not shouting at the ocean, not cutting pieces of the tongue. Typically back then, decades ago, whatever you thought caused stuttering is how you treated it. If they were tongue-tied in a sense, they clipped part of your tongue. Needless to say, we don’t do that anymore.”
The only thing that was more “the lights, camera, action of it,” and wasn’t true, was the implication that King George VI’s “rough upbringing” and stern father caused his stuttering, Gregg said.
“That’s not the case — we now know that stuttering is strongly genetic in nature,” Gregg said. “Once you’re prewired, the environment can worsen it.”
A study released last summer identified a complex of three mutated genes that are responsible for some stuttering cases, Gregg said.
“While we know that there is a genetic predisposition to stutter in 70 percent of the cases, we do not yet know what it means physically,” he said. “There are structural and functional differences in the brains of adults who stutter, but are these there when the stuttering began, or are they the result of a lifetime of dealing with — and trying to compensate for — stuttering?”
The stuttering that King George VI had was “developmental stuttering.” Other kinds of stuttering could be caused by a head injury or trauma, such as a war veteran might exhibit, Gregg explained.
Other famous stutterers include James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader in Star Wars, and running back Darren Sproles of the San Diego Chargers.
Gregg said children with developmental stuttering can either get worse or may “outgrow” it.
Melissa Bass of Perryville said her 11-year-old daughter, Maddie, started stuttering as soon as she learned to talk.
“Maddie’s grandfather, my husband’s father, stutters today,” Bass said.
At first, she said, they didn’t know there was a genetic link to stuttering, but they learned more through research.
Maddie, now a sixth-grader, was referred to UCA for therapy when she was in kindergarten.
Bass said Maddie has been on a “roller coaster” of stuttering.
“She may go a couple of months and she does not stutter one word; she’ll get up some mornings, and you cannot have a conversation with her,” Bass said.
Maddie had made so much progress that she was dismissed from the UCA Stuttering Clinic in third or fourth grade, Bass said.
“Bless Dr. Gregg — he is phenomenal,” Bass said. “I try to tell anybody who’s going through this — go get those services.”
The cost is minimal, Gregg said, because UCA speech-language graduate students conduct the therapy.
Gregg said the goal of therapy is not to make the stuttering disappear, which is not realistic, but to “manage the stuttering.”
“There’s no stuttering cookbook,” Gregg said. “You have to approach each child on an individual basis,” he said, and look at biology, the child’s other language skills, personality and obstacles he will have at home or in school.”
Most treatment revolves around “easy onset,” starting off the word with decreased tension, Gregg said, or “inhaling and upon exhalation, almost try to say it in one breath — you saw that in the movie.
“There is no cure — by the time it’s reached that point that you know as a clinician or researcher that it’s not going away, it becomes less of a fix-it than a let’s manage this.
“It does take dedication.”
Maddie has learned to manage her stutter.
She talked fast during a phone interview, admitting with a laugh that she is a talker.
Having a stutter is frustrating, she said.
“Sometimes it gets annoying because I know I’ll have it until I die,” she said. “I’ve learned to control it.”
One of the techniques she uses is to drag out the first syllable of a word. “Iiiii am playing basketball,” she gave as an example. “Whenever I get stuck, I can stop and drag out the syllable and pause between every three words.”
For a recent presentation at school, she marked her speech where she needed to stop.
“I can kind of tell when [the stuttering is] coming on — when I get pressured, like when the teacher calls on me. I hate talking in class,” Maddie said.
And yes, her stuttering sometimes makes her the target of teasing.
“I deal with it. It’s stupid boys,” she said, sounding like any other 11-year-old girl.
When Maddie grows up, she has a definite career in mind.
“I want to be a speech therapist,” she said, with just the slightest hint of a stutter, and a lot of confidence.
More information about stuttering can be found through the Stuttering Foundation of America, www.stutteringhelp.org, or by calling the UCA Clinic for Stuttering at (501) 450-5776.