The almost complete abandonment of masks by mid-April in Quebec appears to be a liberation for Quebecers suffering from language disorders.
This is the case of former host Josée Boudreault, struck a few years ago by a stroke which left her aphasic. This disability forces her to speak slowly, like the other 100,000 people with aphasia in Canada.
“It’s already hard for us to speak. Imagine with a mask! It’s hard. Just saying the words with that is hell,” she explains to the Homework.
“We met people in their thirties. No boyfriend yet, no family yet. They thought they had all the time in the world. They pick themselves up. They start activities to help each other and there, with the pandemic, they find themselves at home for two years, almost not speaking, ”says her spouse, Louis-Philippe Rivard.
For these people with difficult speech, healing comes through resuming conversations. “It’s like learning a foreign language,” compares Mr. Rivard. It goes without saying that physical distancing has delayed or even thwarted this rehabilitation.
“With the pandemic, for the first time, associations are reporting a decline in language functions,” confirms Carole Anglade, speech therapist who specializes in the social participation of people with aphasia. “Wearing a mask, physical distancing too, gives much less decoding cues for people who have difficulty understanding others.”
“In general, at the worst of the worst, the person stagnates. In general, it progresses. But, for the past two years, we have seen it on the ground: people are doing less well in communicating. And not just on the linguistic level, but also on the motor level”, she adds in reference to other people suffering from paralysis.
“It’s already hard to Zoom with people who are good, who speak well. Everyone bury themselves when there are more than 4 or 5, notes Louis-Philippe Rivard, who speaks for his spouse. There, you hesitate, you have trouble getting into the conversation and, by the time you try your hand, they have gone elsewhere.
The return of in-person meetings will thus relieve thousands of aphasic people for whom virtual connections are impossible. “When you are in front of the person, we can no longer count on his attitude, his benevolence. It’s extremely easy for these people,” notes Carole Anglade.
This text is taken from our newsletter “Coronavirus Mail” of March 21, 2022. To subscribe, click here.