What do adolescents want from stammering therapy?

At the Oxford Stuttering and Cluttering Research Conference in October, ASC convened a panel of academics to judge the nominees for the Travers Reid Award. The award is presented in honour of the charity’s founder, Travers Reid, and recognises research undertaken by an early career researcher that contributes to our understanding of childhood stammering. The winner of this year’s Travers Reid Award, Sophie Card, shares the findings of the research she presented at this year’s conference. 

It was an honour to receive the Travers Reid Award for the poster I presented on this research at the Oxford Stuttering and Cluttering Research Conference 2025. Thank you so much to Ria and the committee for giving me this opportunity to share this work.

When I first embarked on my dissertation, as part of my Masters in Applied Positive Psychology, I knew I wanted to focus on the adolescent age range. Most research into what people want from their stammering therapy has focused on children or adults who stammer, rather than adolescents. Ultimately, I was interested in seeing what aspects of wellbeing are important to adolescents who stammer.

To explore this question, I gathered 35 ‘best hope’ transcripts from adolescents aged between 15 and 18. At the beginning of therapy (either group or individual) at the Michael Palin Centre, a tertiary specialist centre for stammering in London,  we ask young people what they want from therapy, what their ‘best hopes’ are, what difference it will make and who will notice the changes, using Solution Focused Brief Therapy. From the transcripts, I completed an analysis looking for patterns or themes that emerged.

From the analysis there was a wide range of priorities, incorporating hopes that relate to experiencing more ‘positive’ emotions, expanding social circles and building connections with others, living in alignment with values, for stammering to feel less effortful, to participate more in daily speaking situations and learning more about stammering.

All these themes were then compared to the PERMA model of wellbeing, which outlines that we need 5 areas of wellbeing to flourish in life: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. Four of the six themes were felt to have alignment with the 5 areas of PERMA.

From this, we know many aspects of wellbeing are important to adolescents who stammer when they are attending speech and language therapy. Next, I would like to explore ways to incorporate elements of Positive Psychology into stammering therapy, putting into practice the learning I have gained from my master’s programme. I also plan to write up the study for a peer-reviewed journal.

I am grateful to NHS Whittington Health and the Michael Palin Centre for supporting me to complete my masters and this research, as well as to the adolescents and my therapy colleagues who contributed to this study. I look forward to doing more research in the future!

Sophie Card is a specialist speech and language therapist
at the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering in London.