Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Stuttering: A Diagnostic Challenge in a Case Study

Mr. B., a 57- year- old three multilingual executive in an American Company was victim of a road accident. He was brought to hospital where no obvious lesions were found. Following this accident, he suffered from constant nightmares with flashbacks of the accident, insomnia, loss of concentration, loss of memory and attention, emotional instability, great fatigue and anxiety. As to the speech problems, he suffered from word finding problems and stuttering. All the specialist reports (psychiatrist, first RMI etc.) concluded that he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When he came to see me for a neurolinguistic analysis of his stuttering, I was puzzled by different aspects of his speech that did not fit in with “psychogenic stuttering following a shock”. The analysis of his speech and the speech problems opened the way to more investigations. This case study is emblematic for/of the assumption that very careful neurolinguistic analysis can detect neurological dysfunction linked to fine, discrete and diffuse lesions that might not be immediately detected by fRMI.