A little-known condition called aphasia has been in headlines recently, after American actor Bruce Willis said on Wednesday that he is stepping away from acting following his diagnosis of the disorder. His family announced his retirement on social media, revealing that it had been it had been a “really challenging time” for them and thanked fans for their “continued love, compassion and support”.
They explained that the 67-year-old, best known for his role in the Die Hard franchise, had seen his “cognitive abilities” impacted by the condition. The NHS website explains that it's a language and speech disorder caused by damage to the part of brain which controls how we communicate and comprehend.
Though Willis' family has not revealed the cause of his aphasia, the damage is usually due to a stroke, but other causes could be a severe head injury, a brain tumour, an infection, or a progressive neurological condition such as dementia. Aphasia is often split into two types: "expressive", if someone struggles to produce language, or "recessive", if they have difficulty understanding it.
People can have both types, and the NHS says "most people with aphasia have some trouble with their speaking, and will have a mixture of problems with writing, reading and perhaps listening." It's important to note that severity of symptoms varies widely and a person's intelligence isn't impaired by aphasia.
People with expressive aphasia may struggling to say certain words, mix up words, miss out words, make spelling or grammatical errors, or have trouble forming coherent sentences. Meanwhile receptive aphasia causes people to struggle to understand speech and writing or misinterpret words, pictures and body language.
People of all ages can get aphasia, and both men and women are equally affected, but the NHS says it's most commonly diagnosed in people over 65, as this demographic has higher rates of strokes and progressive neurological conditions like dementia.
Sometimes aphasia can improve on its own without treatment, but otherwise speech and language therapy can help. How successful this is varies by individual, and improvements may be observed over a matter of weeks, months, years and even decades.
Most people recover to some degree, and some make a full recovery, says the NHS. It's a better outlook for those who develop aphasia from a one-off cause, such as a stroke, rather than a ongoing causes like dementia - so those with progressive neurological conditions may need to develop other ways to communicate.
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