Can you cure a stammer?

Is there a cure for stammering? This is a question that I am asked on a regular basis and is one which I also asked on a regular basis when I had a stammer. The answer that I was always given was NO and I later found out that to be able to call something a "cure" you need to be able to provide a certain amount of data and patient records. For some unknown reason these studies have never been carried out or even attempted. For me, to be informed at the age of fourteen that there was not a stammering or stuttering cure was soul destroying.

"So what is being done to find a stammering cure?"

This is what I asked my speech therapist who had provided me with the "bad news". He looked at me as if I was rather crazy and merely shrugged his shoulders - ie nothing. He did attempt to explain that there are things that I can do to make the stammer less severe and manageable but by that point my head was somewhere else - in somewhat of a daze etc.

For the next couple of years I basically gave up as my hopes had been completely dashed, of course.

My parents eventually convinced me not to give up and to battle on - I am very thankful that they did. Strangely enough the medical authorities and the advertising standard agencies state you can not cure a stammer but that you can overcome a stammer! Yes that confuses me somewhat as well. If only my speech therapist at the age of fourteen had explained this to me I may have not cried myself to sleep on that most horrible of nights.

Many years later I now run a how to stop stammering course in Birmingham, England. If this is something that is of interest to you please feel free to contact me.