Difficulty Speaking

Sometimes benign, difficulty speaking can also indicate a serious neurological condition that requires rapid and appropriate medical attention. Therefore, difficulty speaking should never be trivialized. If in doubt, call 144 immediately.

"Difficulty speaking" can have various origins. It can be due to benign situations such as someone who has "lost their voice" due to a respiratory infection or serious situations like someone who has suffered a stroke.

It is important to differentiate between chronic difficulties in speaking and those that occur suddenly. The situation will naturally be more concerning for someone who suddenly cannot speak than for someone who has had difficulty speaking for many years, such as a person who stutters.

A severe form of difficulty speaking is dysarthria, which is a difficulty in producing sounds, related to a lesion of the nervous system. Dysarthria can appear suddenly (stroke, head trauma) or occur in the context of a degenerative disease of the nervous system such as Parkinson's disease.

A sudden onset of difficulty speaking is a medical emergency. It is imperative to immediately consult an emergency medical service by calling 144.

To learn more about language disorders in general, read the article language disorders on the passeportsante.Net website, and to better understand dysarthria, read the article dysarthria on the MSD manual website.