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Components of Voice Therapy
In addition to vocal hygiene, voice therapy for non-professional voice users (e.g., non-singers) with voice problems includes the following key components:
(For more information, see Prevention.)
Vocal Exercises
Vocal exercises help patients:
- Elicit or facilitate less effortful voice production by reducing excess levels of voice box muscle activity, as occurs in patients who overcompensate for their voice disorder (vocal hyperfunction)
- Relax the voice box muscles
- Strengthen and improve the coordination of voice box muscles
Breathing Exercises
Breathing exercises help patients:
- Facilitate breathing during voice and speech production, free of extraneous effort
- Identify and eliminate behaviors that reflect poor management of the air supply for voice and speech production (e.g., talking too long on one breath, shallow inhalations, etc.)
Vocal Techniques
Vocal techniques help patients:
- Improve their ability to project the voice without unnecessary strain
- Position and utilize vocal structures to optimize vocal output, thus maximizing the efficiency of voice production
Coordination of Voice With Other Speech Processes
Patients may need to work on the rate, intonation, and prosody of conversational speech while maintaining new and/or target vocal behaviors. Coordination techniques help patients incorporate newly learned vocal behaviors with the entire process of speech production, including:
- Respiration (breathing in and out)
- Articulation (turning sound into spoken words)
- Resonance (amplifying sound in the vocal tract)
Perspective – A Painter's Palette
In general, the components of voice therapy are like colored paints on a palette; a vocal therapist combines these different methods to paint a picture of a customized therapeutic plan geared precisely to each patient's needs. Over the past 20 years, a variety of formal voice therapy techniques and regimens have been published, and in some cases supported by research studies. The selection of a particular regimen for a patient will depend upon that patient's voice disorder as well as the patient's personal preferences.
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