Restrictions to Practicing as a Bilingual Speech-Language-Pathology

The association between body pain and voice disorder symptoms has been clinically observed but not properlyinvestigated. Intense  voice  use  in  which  there is an overloading of the vocal mechanism,  with  strain  and effortfulphonation may cause discomfort or even  pain while speaking. The  purpose  of  this  research  was to identify,categorize and compare body pains among different professional voice users, their vocal self- assessment, theirvoice complaints and their sick leave history. A total of 840 individuals, 591 women and 249 men  (150  nonprofessional  voice  users,  100  20  popular singers, 50 classical choral singers, 150 telemarketers, 150 speechlanguage pathologists, 90 actors and 150 teachers) volunteered to participate in this study. They answered a selfassessment questionnaire that investigated voice usage, voice complaints and presence of 13 different body pains. Results show that teachers presented the highest mean number of body aches pains (7.41) and the group ofclassical singers presented the lowest mean number (2.46). Those with voice complaints presented higher means ofbody pains (5.68) when compared to those without voice complaints (3.76). In addition, subjects that reported sickleave had higher means of body pains. The current study indicates that there may be a connection between bodypain and training specific voice training once it may play a positive role on the management, development andperception of body pain in trained professionals, such as classical singers.

Author(s): Akbaruddin Ali

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