Re: Questions about being mute

Dear Nicole,

This is a very interesting question you brought up.

There are a lot different factors that need to be considered in answering your questions.

Let us first start by defining a "mute". A mute is one that can not talk.

Then there are people with a speech defect that can't talk well which are considered "partial mutes." Maybe some people can only make grunting sounds and can not make sounds such as words that we recognize as real words in our language.

The causes are very wide ranging. There are cases where the brain or the body does not develop correctly from the time in forming a baby. The causes for this can result in poor diet such as not having Iodine. By not having Iodine a particular hormone does not form from the thyroid gland (it is in your neck). People like this are called hypothyroid. This condition somehow damages the developing auditory system, causing deafness and other neurological defects. There are many people in the USA (in the old days 1800's) that developed this from a diet without enough Iodine.

If one developed like this then they might not be able to learn to speak since their brain is damaged. But then maybe some people only had a little bit of damage since they only had a low diet but still had a little bit of Iodine. Then there are people that have other development problems in the brain where the speech center does not form correctly. You can imagine then if the brain is messed up then it can be very hard to learn to speak correctly. It would depend very much how much of brain did not form correctly. Some places in the brain can be used to help other areas that do not develop properly.

So let’s think about injures to the brain. Maybe one had a brain tumor or a got shot in the head or an accident occurred in which a piece of metal went through the skull and just damaged a part of the brain for speech. If such events occur in a child other parts of the brain can sometimes help with the loss. In adults this is harder for the brain to do. Also it depends on the amount brain damage.

You probably heard of older people that have a stroke (the blood vessel closes to a part of the brain) or a blood vessel pops open in the brain and causes bleeding. Well in either case depending are which part of the brain and the amount of brain tissue damaged one can become mute. The recovery from such problem can vary in each person.

I think you can see it is hard to make a general statement to say if someone will get better if they are mute because it depends what the cause is do to: development problems or from a injury and did the problem occur from birth or only start when the person is an adult. Each mute person would need to be considered for such different problems. Some young people that have a stroke have to learn again how to speak and after a few years they recovery very well. Other people are not so lucky.

There are other problems in people in which they just do not want to talk but can. This is called Selective Mutism. I found this information on the www: “Over the years more and more children seem to be silencing themselves selectively. Due to the fact that Selective Mutism is a disorder that is not widely discussed, it is difficult to decipher whether a child is just shy, or if there is something more serious happening with that child.”

Particular drugs (bad ones that are against the law to have) can cause one’s brain to act weird and in some cases turn the person into one that does not talk much. The causes are not understood yet by medical researchers.

Your second question, “Last how does a person cope with everyday life?” also depends on if the problem occurred from birth or as an adult. Think if you now turned into a mute. What would you do? You would probably write on a piece of paper everything you wanted to say. Maybe you would learn to use “SIGN LANGUAGE” and communicate that way. There are computers today that you can type words into it and then it will say the words for you. This would allow you to communicate easily to others and in different languages! I don’t know how people that are born being a mute learn to communicate. I can only image that it is very difficult to work with such babies and children until they learn to write or use a computer.

I hope this helps a little.

All the best,

Robin