SERV ICE MEE T S PR AC TICE
PACT book group builds supportive space for those with aphasia
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TEMPLE PUBLIC HE ALTH
In previous semesters, the College of Public Health’s book group for people with aphasia had chosen two lively novels to read: one about a widow who joins the CIA, and the other about a bookstore owner who receives a mysterious package. But this year’s choice, the nonfiction Identity Theft: Rediscovering Ourselves After Stroke, felt much more personal to group members. The book’s author, former Stanford University professor Debra Meyerson, like members of the group had suffered a stroke amid a successful career. She uneasily accepted a new reality of life with aphasia, a communication disorder that can impair a person’s ability to speak, read, write and process incoming language. For people with aphasia, the intellect remains intact; vocabulary isn’t necessarily lost, but a pathway to access it is damaged. The impact is more than physical. It can cause isolation, depression, and a “painful longing for what once was,” Meyerson writes in the book, which her son helped her put on paper. “Eventually we all come to appreciate that many of the qualities we have defined ourselves by are now threatened by our loss of capabilities.” Temple has long provided free speech clinics to adults and children through the College of Public Health’s Speech-Language-Hearing Center. These sessions provide personalized speech therapy to people from the local community and give CPH’s speech pathology students
