Study of self-esteem and presence of anxiety in a sample of Egyptian children with stuttering

Abstract EN

Background : children who stutter often exhibit behavioral changes in school and in relationships with parents and colleagues.

stuttering may lead to development of anxiety and lower self-esteem.

aims : the study aims to detect the self-esteem and anxiety in Egyptian children who stutter and their relation with stuttering severity.

materials & methods : a case-control study, including thirty-one children who stutter and thirty-one control (fluent children).

after full-filling the inclusion and exclusion criteria, stuttering severity instrument-Arabic form (SSI-A) was applied on stuttering children to confirm the diagnosis and detect the stuttering severity to such cases.

the coppersmith self-esteem inventory and the children manifest anxiety scale were administrated to evaluate the self-esteem and anxiety symptoms, respectively.

results : compared with controls, according to the (coppersmith self-esteem inventory), the children who stutter had a significant difference in the general domain (p = 0.002) and in the academic domain (p = 0.005).

a highly significant difference between both groups regards the total score of self- esteem (se) (p<0.001), social se (p<0.001), although both groups had good academic se.

there was a non-significant difference in home se (p = 0.099), in spite it was low se.

according to the revised children manifest anxiety scale, the stuttering group showed a significant score, but not detected statistically except the negative expectation had significant difference (p = 0.045).

stuttering severity gets statistically significant differences with total score se, general se, home se, total score anxiety, symptomatic, physiological and negative expectation.

conclusions : stuttering is a speech disorder associated with low self-esteem and anxiety.

this study highlights the need for multidisciplinary approaches to stuttering diagnosis and management, including ordinary speech therapy, child psychiatry, and good family guidance.