PORTUGUESE JOURNAL OF SPEECH THERAPY
RPTF | VOLUME 0 | YEAR I
Activity and participation assessment of people with aphasia
Maria Assunção Matos | Luís M. T. Jesus | Ana Allen Gomes | Madalena Cruice
ABSTRACT:
Over the past 20 years, research in aphasia has shown that its consequences in daily life of the person with this condition, as well as in the life of all those who are related to the person with aphasia, can be devastating. It also highlighted the need for speech and language therapists to assess the impact of aphasia on the performance of their clients in activities of daily living and social participation, and focus their intervention on socially relevant treatments for them. In Portugal, clinical practice developed with these people has been changing in the direction of integrating these policies. However, the existing assessment tools do not permit an analysis of all these aspects. The Activities and Participation Profile (TAPP) aims to facilitate the characterisation of the pattern of activities /participation of people with aphasia before and after stroke, and explore the reasons why people have modified their activities. This assessment tool and the data obtained with fourteen people with aphasia will be presented. After stroke on average, participants in the sample took part in seventeen activities, increased their frequency of one and reduced the frequency of three, as well as started two new activities. The reasons given for changing the usual frequency of these activities are mainly language and motor disorders, and emotional reactions. Future work should be developed in order to study the psychometric characteristics of the TAPP.
KEYWORDS: Aphasia, Consequences, Activities, Participation, ICF.