Margaret Fawcus – författare

This is a second edition of a textbook for speech therapy students and practitioners. The text has been revised with the addition of new chapters on vocal physiology, phonosurgery and the use of instrumentation in vocal therapy. Each chapter gives relevant theoretical background, but the main emphasis is on the practical management of voice problems. This up-to-date edition provides a comprehensive approaches to treatment, including as it does the voice of the deaf, the cerebral palsied child and the transsexual, in addition to the more traditional areas of voice disorder. This book should be of interest to speech therapy students and practitioners.

Since this book was first published, four years ago, there has been a considerable upsurge of interest in the field of both normal and abnormal voice production. Tangible evidence of this lies in the publication of the Journal of Voice in the United States, and in the UK the formation of the British Voice Association. This organization has attracted an increasing membership from professionals involved in all aspects of voice care and use - actors and singers, laryngologists and speech therapists, teachers and phoneticians. The Association holds regular study days, holds an annual two-day symposium, and publishes a Newsletter which attracts entries from this broad spectrum of professionals. We have also seen an increase in the number of specialist voice clinics, and in the two final chapters in this book a contrast is presented between such a specialist setting and the more typical clinic that operates in the majority of general hospitals. This last chapter now contains a breakdown of voice referrals over an eight-year period, which must represent a unique published study in this country. There still remains, however, little research into the management of voice disorders. There is clearly a need for more efficacy studies into specific treatment methods, and the single case-study designs developed in the field of aphasia would seem to be appropriate here.

The book has a broad base of learning difficulty which includes autism and Asperger's syndrome. Dyslexia has also been included, since it contributes so pervasively to learning difficulties at school. The author also covers a wide developmental life span, from working with young babies to adolescents; and the whole spectrum of mental handicap, from mild learning difficulties to severe learning difficulties and profound and multiple handicaps.