[3] Some of the available treatments focus on repetitive practicing of strategies to suppress or hide stuttering through speed reduction, breathing regulation, and mouth motor contact.
[5][6] When treating stuttering in children, some researchers recommend that an evaluation be conducted every three months in order to determine whether or not the selected treatment option is positively impacting the child.
[8] Depending the child or adult, therapy is generally a management of speech comfort, and/or teaching techniques to speak in a controlled way.
Other types of speech therapy for children acknowledge that since there is no cure for stuttering, elimination as a goal may cause negative impacts.
The goal for this type of therapy is to ensure a child continues to speaks, whether they spontaneously stop stuttering or not.
People who stutter are trained to reduce their speaking rate by stretching vowels and consonants, and using other disfluency-reducing techniques such as continuous airflow and soft speech contacts.
The Modifying Phonation Intervals (MPI) Stuttering Treatment Program is designed to be a computer-aided, bio-feedback program that requires appropriate software (MPI smartphone app) and hardware (a throat microphone headset) which records the phonation intervals, or PIs, from the surface of the speaker's throat.
The MPI Stuttering Treatment Schedule is divided into four phases: Pre-Treatment, Establishment, Transfer, and Maintenance.
[15] In a 2006 review of the efficacy of stuttering treatments, none of the studies on altered auditory feedback met the criteria for experimental quality, such as the presence of control groups.
The investigational compound, ecopipam, is unique from other dopamine antagonists in that it acts on D1 receptors instead of D2, owing little, if any risk, of movement disorders.
A 2019 open label study of ecopipam in adults demonstrated significantly improved stuttering symptoms with no reports of parkinsonian-like movement disorders or tardive dyskinesia which can be seen with D2 antagonists.
CBT may be partially effective in helping clients reduce their secondary behaviors, anxiety, and cognitive distortion.
[49][50] Cognitive behavioral therapy is a collaborative process that requires the client and the therapist working together to explore the buried feelings of frustration, avoidance, anger, and self-doubt.
Research at the Michael Palin Center has shown that CBT is a powerful tool for children who stutter.
[51] Several pharmacologic, i.e. drug-based, methods to control or alleviate stuttering events have been studied, but each has either proved ineffective or have had adverse effects.