Episode #104: From fringe to mainstream - Stress and integrative health in aphasia: A Conversation with Jacqueline Laures-Gore

Aphasia Access Conversations

Welcome to this edition of Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. My name is Janet Patterson. I am a Research Speech-Language Pathologist at the VA Northern California Healthcare System in Martinez, California, and a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group. Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration, and ideas that support their efforts in engaging with persons with aphasia and their families through a variety of educational materials and resources. I am today's host for today’s episode that will feature Dr. Jacqueline Laures-Gore. These Show Notes accompany the conversation with Dr. Laures-Gore but are not a verbatim transcript.

Dr. Jacqueline Laures-Gore

Dr. Laures-Gore is a professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where she directs the Aphasia and Motor Speech Disorders Laboratory. Jacqueline's work spans topics in aphasia and motor speech disorders. For the past several years she has investigated the relationship between integrative health practices and aphasia rehabilitation.

In today’s episode with Dr. Laures-Gore you will hear about:

1. the relationship among stress, resilience, and coping skills,
2. recognizing and measuring physiological stress and perceived, self-reported stress,
3. the interaction of stress, anxiety, and fear, and
4. the role integrative health practices can have in daily life and in aphasia rehabilitation.

Dr. Janet Patterson: Welcome to this edition of Aphasia Access Conversations. Today I am delighted to be speaking with my friend and colleague, Dr. Jacqueline Laures-Gore. Jacqueline is a professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where she directs the Aphasia and Motor Speech Disorders Laboratory. Jacqueline's work spans topics in aphasia and motor speech disorders, including investigating working memory in persons with aphasia. In motor speech disorders, she and colleagues examined topics such as intelligibility in people who have dysarthria, and speaker and listener perceptions of speech in persons with dysarthria. She is a co-creator of the Atlanta Motor Speech Disorders Corpus, which is a comprehensive spoken language dataset from speakers with motor speech disorders in Atlanta, Georgia. This collaborative project gathered speech samples from non-mainstream, American English speakers residing in the southeastern United States in order to provide a more diverse perspective of motor speech disorders.

For over two decades, Jacqueline has been interested in how personal, physiological, and psychological factors affect people with aphasia, and aphasia rehabilitation. She has investigated topics such as stress, depression, mental health concerns, and how to assess their presence and influence. With her colleague, Ken Rice, she recently published the Simple Aphasia Stress Scale in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. The SASS is a single item self-report measure of acute stress in adults with aphasia.

Dr. Laures-Gore’s work also investigated the power of laughter, mindfulness, meditation, spirituality, yoga, and integrative health practices for persons with aphasia. I am pleased to welcome Jacqueline to Aphasia Access Conversations today and look forward to talking with her about her clinical and research experience considering how integrative medicine can influence a person with aphasia and their rehabilitation, and the powerful effects that mindfulness, laughter, and yoga can have on life outlook, participation, and rehabilitation.

Welcome, Jacqueline. I appreciate your time today in talking with me about these fascinating and important topics.

Dr. Jaqueline Laures-Gore: I am very happy to be here, Janet, and very honored. I look forward to a very lively and fun conversation with you today.

Janet: Jacqueline I would like to start by asking you about the aspect of your aphasia research interests that includes important topics such as depression in persons with aphasia, stress, laughter, and spirituality. In fact, I believe you are among the first to write about the value of integrated health practice in aphasia. How did your career path and learning curve about aphasia take you to this line of inquiry?

Jacqueline: There's quite a bit of time that I spent with people with aphasia through my clinical work, and even early on before I became a speech-language pathologist and worked in a geriatric setting. There was a gentleman there who had aphasia and we did not really know how to communicate with him. He was very isolated. He sat by himself most of the time, was very alone. That image of him and what he must have been experiencing, and our inability to really know how to communicate with him, stuck with me over the years and definitely drove me toward a career in speech-language pathology, and specifically working with people with aphasia. Then, after becoming a speech-language pathologist, and working full time in rehab settings, it became very obvious that people with aphasia were more than the problems with phonology and semantics, and so forth. There was a bigger picture here, and there was oftentimes frustration. I watched and tried to provide some help to reduce frustration during some of the language tasks that people would be doing in clinic. But as I tried to look in the literature about well, what do we know about this frustration? What do we know about stress and the language system? What do we know about ways to facilitate language through the stress mechanism? What do we know about relaxation, and its effect on language, and so forth. All of those things really seem very under-explored in our aphasia literature. My curiosity definitely drove me to looking then, into a Ph.D., and having some great mentors who encouraged me to continue down this path of the fringe group. There weren't a lot of people who were very interested at the time in stress and thinking about what happens with the language system, or of mindfulness, meditation, and so forth. By far, I'm not the first to consider these things. McNeil and Prescott had a meditation paper, I think it was back in the 1970s. Cynthia Thompson had a paper on hypnosis, I think it was in the 1980s. There have been others, too.

Janet: I'm listening to you and thinking, we probably all had some sort of thoughts about this, as we see patients. I'm envisioning the patient that you saw in the geriatric center, we probably all have had patients like that. I'm impressed that you didn't forget, that you kept that in your mind as you moved forward. I think many of us didn't know what to do with it, didn't know how to think about this. Other things present themselves and we get busy with our worlds and our learning about phonology, or semantics, or syntax. It's hard to remember. I'm glad that you remembered and also, that you were brave enough to stay out there on that fringe, because not everybody is that brave.

Jacqueline: Oh, it's hard! It has been hard. It's gotten easier now, and hopefully, it will be easier for the next generation of researchers on this topic. Definitely my longtime collaborator, Rebecca Shisler Marshall, and I had difficulty getting things published. Thinking too, about research design, and approaching the topic with this particular group of individuals with communication disorders, it's a unique population. There's still a lot of growth regarding research design and establishing clinical trials, and we're just at the early phase of really investigating this.

I love that you were pointing out that oftentimes people forget that first person that they encounter with a specific communication disorder, and in this case with aphasia. I was 17, and I'm a few years older than 17 now, but I think, though, that for some individuals, there's a catalyst. It could be a personal experience, I hear lots of times when we have students coming through our program, “Oh, I had a family member who (fill in the blank) and had to have speech therapy”, or “I myself had to have some kind of speech therapy, and that's why I want to do this”. For me, at least, it was this individual that I was tasked to care for, and not really knowing how to care for that person. Definitely an emotional component there, and a feeling of responsibility.

Janet: I have visions of some of my patients when I was first starting out, boy do I wish I could have a do over!

Jacqueline: Oh yeah, obviously, I hear you.

Janet: This leads me to my next question. Your research has investigated some of the challenges that all of us, including persons with aphasia, experience such as depression or stress or mental health concerns, or coping with life's challenges, whether they're small challenges or large challenges. These words and concepts, I think they appear commonly in our conversations, and while people may believe they understand their definitions at a broad level, I believe that that may not be the case when we consider them in the context of treating our clients who have aphasia. How do you think about these concepts as they relate to persons with aphasia and their family members? And to our treatment programs? Could you give us some sort of guidance about how we might define and use these terms in our clinical work?

Jacqueline: Let's start with stress. Something that I have been talking a lot about lately, and especially with my doctoral student right now, is defining stress, defining anxiety, defining fear, and the differences between those three. When we think about stress, stress is really that threat in the moment. There are different ways in which we respond to that in-the-moment threat. One way is physiologic, and we have two biological arms of the physiologic stress response. One is the sympathetic adrenal medullary system, and the other is the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. The first one, the sympathetic one, or the SAM, shows up with our heart rate and sweating, changes in our digestive system, and pupil dilation. The other one, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, that one will show up more with the changes in ACTH [adrenocorticotropic hormone] and downstream cortisol. All of those, though, have different effects on our body, and we can measure them with different techniques.

The physiologic stress response is adaptive, and stress is not always a bad thing. From an evolutionary perspective, having that stress response has been very beneficial for us, as humans. Now, when that stress response is consistently engaged, then it becomes problematic and oftentimes can become some type of illness or disease. In the short term in helps us to adapt to a potentially negative situation.

The other stress is more of a perceived stress. Perceived stress is the perception that there is a stressor, there is something in my environment that is creating this feeling of dis-ease. That perception of stress is reliant also on whether you feel you have, or you have coping resources. Do you have the support around you to help you deal with this stressor? For instance, do you have the financial means to help yourself, and some people rely on religious practices or spiritual practices to help them cope.

Anyway, so we have that self-perception of stress, and then we also have the physiologic stress, and the two do not have to match. Oftentimes, we can have somebody who reports themselves as perceiving stress and having a high level of perceived stress, but physiologically, it's not showing up. That makes it always a little bit tougher to study stress, and clinically to even assess stress. I'm not sure which is more important. Is it more important to not be perceiving stress? Or is it more important not to be feeling stress physiologically? I don't have the answer to that.

One of the things that's very exciting clinically though, is that there are more wearables now that can detect changes in heart rate, changes in skin conductance or skin response. I think that is going to be helpful eventually for clinicians who are trying to determine how stressful a certain situation is as far as a language task or a communication task.

We're also seeing more self-report measures of stress. We have the SASS, as you had mentioned, which is an acute measure. It's just one question and it's on a scale. Rebecca Hunting Pompon and colleagues created the Modified Perceived Stress Scale, which looks at stress over the last month, more of a chronic stress assessment.

You'd mentioned depression. We're seeing a lot more work in post stroke depression in people with aphasia in the last ten years or so. With that attention to the mental health of people with aphasia, we're seeing more scales that are at least being looked at, to help measure depression in people with aphasia, whether it be modifications of stroke depression scales that are already there but for the general population, or specific to people with aphasia. I see those as becoming more accessible clinically and us figuring out more about what we can be using in the clinic to look at depression.

Janet: This is fascinating, and I would love to spend hours talking with you in more detail about some of these measures.

In preparing to talk with you, I did a literature search of some of these terms like stress or depression, as they are linked with aphasia. I noticed that there were a few papers on the topic 30 or more years ago, but not many. In the last decade or so, as you mentioned, there has been an increasing number of papers that describe something about stress or depression, or how to measure it, or what to do about it. I think that this is a good trend, and it's certainly consistent with LPAA principles that seek to maximize the life experience of persons with aphasia. That said, I was challenged to draw consistent conclusions from the evidence that I saw. I'm wondering if you could summarize some of the findings from your research and experience and help us place this work in the greater context of evidence informed practice for aphasia.

Jacqueline: We know more about depression and functional outcomes, how post stroke depression can have a negative effect on functional outcomes in persons with aphasia. The problem is that the amount of literature is fairly small. Primarily, it's because that in the past, people with aphasia have been excluded from some of those studies. I see that changing now, where there is more inclusion of persons with aphasia. Then when it comes to stress, that literature is really, really just beginning, as far as empirical data to direct clinical care. In my work, what I've been able to show is that there are definitely some correlations, some associations between self-reported stress, and some aspects of discourse. I've been setting, at least most recently, picture description, for instance, or some type of narrative, and then looking at the discourse production to see if there's any kind of association with different aspects of self-reported stress. We found some things but nothing necessarily consistent. There's been some association with pausing, such as filled pause and unfilled pauses. We've seen that perceived stress can be either negatively or positively associated with those aspects of discourse. I think that right now, the evidence is a little unclear about what the effect of stress is on language.

I also always want to tell people that we really need to not always think about stress negatively. We need to think too about stress as an adaptive process. It may be that sometimes stress and language work together very nicely, and stress may give language a little boost. There was a 2019 paper that we had out looking at cortisol awakening response and diurnal variation, and we saw some differences between people with aphasia, and people without stroke and aphasia. The people who did not have a stroke and aphasia had a cortisol awakening response, which is that when we first wake up, the cortisol which is always in our body and is that very endpoint of hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, it releases glucose in our system and gives us sugar which gives us energy. For the most part, when people wake up, they have a lower level of cortisol. Then about 30 minutes later it starts peaking and then it continues to climb throughout the day. It's thought that that energy at the early onset of the day gives us a little bit of energy to get us going. In that 2019 paper, we didn't see that people with aphasia were following that pattern. That made us wonder if maybe there's an energy source that isn't fully functioning for people with aphasia, or at least isn't fully engaged in people with aphasia, and that could be contributing to language. There are a lot of things with that paper, too, that left us with more questions than answers. I think that's where we're at as a whole, with stress, with depression, with integrative health practices, is a lot more questions than answers still.

I do think that there's a sweet spot that maybe I won't, it will probably be maybe the next generation, I don't know if it'll stick around with my generation, or with me at least, but I'm trying to figure out what that sweet spot is for individuals. How much stress is too much stress, how much stress is just enough stress. Also, there's probably a big component of just inter- and intra-individual variability. What works for me, Janet, may not work for you. I think that's when clinical care really takes on that art piece, too, tuning into the person that you're helping and finding out what works for them.

Janet: I think you've said that so, so well. One of my fears is that this larger idea of the work that you're doing, people may see it as a bandwagon to jump on without really understanding the work behind it, the data behind it. So hearing you say, yes, we think there are some effects, but there's not enough evidence yet for us to say exactly what, in what way, for whom, all the time, under what conditions. Also bringing the ideas back into the art of the clinical work to pay attention to your patient, not just the responses that they're making linguistically, but also nonverbally, what they're showing you or telling you. Maybe take a step back to talk about, are they having a moment of stress? Or is something going on in their life that can be affecting their performance today? I think that's a good thing.

Let me turn a little bit in a different direction, because in addition to talking about and measuring stress and depression, your work is also focused on behaviors that can benefit all of us. Behaviors or activities such as mindfulness, yogic breathing, meditation, yoga. How did you become convinced that these activities can have a positive effect on a person with aphasia?

Jacqueline: Well, I don't know if I'm convinced. I am exploring.

Janet: Good point.

Jacqueline: It is yeah. I'm not convinced. I think, again, that there are differences between people and so that not everybody has a good experience with yogic breathing, or is it maybe not appropriate for some individuals. Mindfulness can be very beneficial for people who are not necessarily aware of a certain behavior. But at the same time, when one becomes more mindful, there may be other emotions that come up. When you're introducing mindfulness into therapy you have to be aware that there may be some negative parts to introducing that and be prepared for some other emotions that may come up.

Stacy Silverman McGuire is a student of mine, and she did a thesis on laughter, yogic laughter. In that paper, we give a little qualitative piece to some of what she had studied and there were some people who just really enjoyed laughing and wanted to have more laughter in therapy. One person specifically commented that there's just not enough laughing that goes on in aphasia therapy. Another comment was that it was just weird; their experience was that this was kind of weird. People have different things that work for them, and some people don't like them. I think what we'll continue to find in this line of work is, again, that individual piece of what may work for some may not work for others.

When we look at some of these integrative health practices, many of them have roots in ancient medicines, whether it be ayurvedic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, indigenous medicines, there's a long, long history. Some of the practices have become more secularized. Some of the practices have, I should say, religious roots to them, and in the western world have become a bit more secularized. For some people that we may be caring for, they may not be comfortable with some of these integrative health practices because of religious beliefs, or they may prefer more conventional medicine. So how's that, clear as mud?

Janet: It is more clear than mud, actually. Because it's what you said earlier. I don't think this is a fringe topic any longer, but it certainly is an unexplored topic. It's messy, it's difficult to examine. You talked about your challenges in thinking about research design, for example. And then, of course, there's the personal comfort with any aspect of this. It's not just the person with aphasia, but I'm thinking about if you're a clinician, how do you get to a comfort level where you can talk about mindfulness, or talk about spirituality? If you're not comfortable, then it's probably not a good thing for you to do, because your level of discomfort will spill over onto the client, who will certainly be aware that you're not comfortable talking about this. That may affect the interaction.

Do you have any thoughts or any advice or guidance you might give to clinicians as we think about this large, messy topic, if you will, and how we might be thinking about incorporating any of these things into our worlds?

Jacqueline: Yeah, I think a really good aspect of all of this is clinician comfort, and thinking about clinician comfort, even getting away from just the standard, traditional model of therapy, where we show a picture, and then we work on naming that picture. When there's been the movement since the late 1990s of the Life Participation Approach to Aphasia, and getting outside of just the impairment focus, and looking at life participation, and so forth. That goes along with A-FROM and all of that wonderful work that people before me have done. Clinicians had to feel comfortable with that, too, of looking at the bigger, broader picture. Now this adds another dimension as well, that I think feeds in very nicely to LPAA, and A-FROM and so forth.

When we think about things like meditation, awareness, even just doing something, not necessarily labeling it as meditation, but labeling it, as “Let's just focus on your breath for a moment. Slow down, and just breathe.” You can have a few deep breaths, and help that person get back into a state where maybe they are not over aroused with their stress system.

As far as the religion and spiritual aspect, it's part of one's culture. As we work with people who are culturally diverse, we are as speech-language pathologists, really responsible for becoming more comfortable with acknowledging all of the aspects of culture, which includes religion and spirituality. One's religious practices can have an immense effect on their perspective about therapy, about aphasia, about recovery. That is an area that we're learning more about specifically with aphasia. When we look at religious practices and healthcare in general, and there's a much larger literature out there than looking here, just within aphasia rehabilitation. So, again, I think we're going to be learning a lot more in the coming years about that aspect. But again, it is recognizing an important piece of one's culture.

I feel like I'm kind of just like rambling on.

Janet: Well, first of all, you're not rambling on. It's a winding road topic, if you will, it's not a straight-line topic. There are perspectives from all over that we have to consider. As you were talking, part of what I began to think was that there's a difference between acknowledging and respecting someone else's beliefs or spirituality or their culture, even if you don't understand it, or perhaps you don't personally practice it or personally agree with it. But you acknowledge it, you accept it, and put yourself in a comfortable position so that you can have a clinical relationship with the patient, and then achieve the goals that you want. That's what it seems to me like you're saying, or you're advocating for?

Jacqueline: Yeah, I think the hit the nail on the head.

Janet: Let me ask you a little bit more about your work on stress. You talked about two terms, self-reported perceived stress, and then stress, or maybe physiological stress. Could you define these terms a little bit more deeply, and give us some examples of how they appear in the lives of persons with aphasia, and without aphasia?

Jacqueline: Well, physiologic stress, again, can manifest differently throughout the body, because of the two different biological arms of the stress response. There is such a huge literature now on all of the stress-related illnesses that we have here and globally, and of course, stressors are different. They can be related to family situations, they can be related to income level, they can be related to health, political issues, wars. There can be the big things. Then that physiologic stress may be engaged with the smaller day to day things, such as a coworker, that is really hard to deal with, or a situation with a spouse or a sibling, or so forth.

And then there's the perception of stress, which I think is so incredibly important. Sometimes you may, Janet, have met somebody, or maybe you yourself are that person, who doesn't seem to get too worried about things. They seem to have a perspective that, “I can handle this, I got this, It'll turn out just fine”. They can kind of roll along with life. Then there are individuals where the cup of water spills and it's the end of the world. There's concern about little things. How we perceive stress is based on, I think, early life experiences. It's based on what we come into this world with and the modifiers in the environment, and then from there, form those who perceive stress and those who don't perceive a lot of stress. It gets back to coping. Some individuals have the ability to cope much better than other individuals and have a lot more to rely on in times of stressful events than others?

Janet: I think the coping that you mentioned is so important. A big part of our job is probably supporting that throughout our treatment, the rehabilitation program, so the patient can continue to cope with the challenges of aphasia.

Jacqueline: I agree, finding out how an individual's coping. We've been working on trying to develop a coping questionnaire for people with aphasia for a few years now. We're data collecting with that and hoping to have that available to clinicians. Right now, we don't have one that's aphasia friendly. We don't have a coping questionnaire to find out how are people coping? What are they relying on? Are they relying on maladaptive behaviors to cope? Are they drinking a lot? Are they abusing other substances? Or, are they reaching out to friends? Are they getting some exercise. There are some very positive ways of coping, and there are some natural, healthy ways of coping. Finding that out is very important clinically, and how do we do that? My answer is we need to develop a good questionnaire that's psychometrically valid, and so forth. Until then, clinicians can definitely ask, and use supported communication techniques, I should say, in order to get those answers to, “What do you do when you get really frustrated?”, and then have some pictures to point to perhaps, or words to point to whatever that person is able to best communicate with?

Janet: That's a great idea.

Jacqueline: Yeah. First of all, understand what their coping mechanisms are and strategies, and then help them to develop more or, through the Life Participation Approach, how do we help them to have access to those things that might help them to cope? If they were really engaged in group activities prior to their stroke and living with aphasia, then how can they get back to that? How can we have them engage again?

Janet: Well, you've just actually given a partial answer to the next question I want to ask you, which is how we can, as clinicians, incorporate some of these positive experiences or helpful experiences into our clinical activities. The thing is, like many of us, we may not be experienced at, say, incorporating mindfulness or yoga into our own lives, not to mention putting them into treatment. And so we likely have no idea how to start. Based on your research, and again, on your clinical experience, what advice can you give our listeners who may wish to add some of these ideas or some of these activities to our practice? Where do we start?

Jacqueline: I think getting back to that comfort level. What is the clinician comfortable with? And as you had pointed out, that if you're don't have that internal self-comfort of “I can have the person that I'm working with, kind of slow down, take a deep breath, maybe take four breaths in and out slowly”. If I don't feel comfortable doing that, then don't do it, because it's going to come off kind of odd. Having some comfort, whether it be practicing with oneself, or practicing with others before you get into therapy, I think that's really important.

Janet: There are practices such as yoga, for example. I think if you're going to incorporate yoga, you have to know what you're doing. You have to understand yoga, or you have to be able to do it or to instruct it. If you're not at that instructor level, there can be problems in the therapy session. So you wouldn't want to incorporate yoga, unless you are really skilled at it and know what you're doing. But there have to be some positive practices that are relatively easy to incorporate, maybe laughter or even a discussion of spirituality. I'm thinking about, sort of, the term Monday morning practice. What can clinicians do on Monday morning, without having to do a lot of learning about yoga or practicing yoga? What can they do on Monday morning, when they see clients that might help them begin on this path of integrative health practices or thinking about the other aspects of our aphasia rehabilitation? Does that makes sense?

Jacqueline: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It is the “rubber hitting the road” sort of thing to all of this?

Janet: Exactly.

Jacqueline: There is adaptive yoga that Amy Dietz and Laura Bislick and colleagues had published in AJSLP, a couple of years ago. There are some postures that are presented that are accessible to clinicians. So they could look at those. There are some adaptive yoga techniques that are clinically accessible. Some very simple breathing activities. These are not complicated. It is just a matter of “Close your eyes; and for a moment, go ahead and take a nice deep breath in and out.” Recognizing that the breath really anchors everyone to the moment. When you have an individual that you're working with that seems to be over stressed and it's working against them in what you're trying to have accomplished in your therapy session, taking a moment, closing the eyes, and breathing will bring them back to that moment, moment of relaxation or to the present where they can approach the task with a different perspective.

Janet: It makes so much sense to me and even just doing it with you - for those few seconds, closing my eyes taking a deep breath, I felt a difference in my own self, just in the in the course of this conversation. I can imagine that it will produce a similar effect, resetting, if you will, the clinical environment, resetting the goals, and reducing perhaps any negative perceived stress that the patient might have. If they're thinking that they're not doing what they're supposed to, or they're not meeting goals, or they're having troubles. It's great idea.

As we bring this conversation to a close Jacqueline, are there any other pearls of wisdom or lessons learned in thinking about the influences of integrative health behaviors on language and communication, rehabilitation, not just for the people with aphasia, but also for their families, their friends, and for clinicians,

Jacqueline: I think lessons learned is keeping an open mind and really approaching aphasia, with the perspective that there is the language impairment, but there's also a bigger picture here. There are different approaches to recovery that can stem from traditional ancient medical beliefs that may help us during this modern time that we're in. I think keeping an open mind, but yet, maintaining some skepticism, too. We do want to continue to have science guide our therapies, as well as our clinical experience. It can be hard to have a convergence of the two at times. But I think that we can't ignore that there is more than just the language impairment going on.

Janet: We cannot ignore it. You're right, especially if we are proponents of the LPAA model, which incorporates the whole individual in living their life. I agree with everything that you've said and I'm finding myself thinking of that balance, too, between there is some stress that can be good, but don't have too much stress, because you don't want it to be a bad thing, and keep an open mind but have healthy skepticism. All of that's a good thing for all of us to practice.

Jacqueline: Not easy, it's hard to do, but it's a good thing.

Janet: Today's conversation has been, for me at least, thought provoking and enlightening and I hope it has been for our listeners as well. Realizing that additional work is necessary to provide an evidence informed foundation for incorporating many of the activities such as yoga practice, or mindfulness into aphasia rehabilitation, I believe that this is an avenue well worth pursuing in both clinical and research activities. I would like to thank my guest, Dr. Jacqueline Laures-Gore for sharing her thoughts and experience in this important area of clinical research and practice, Jacqueline, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today, and for providing our listeners with the foundation and how to think about integrative medicine.

Jacqueline: You are very welcome. This was very fun. Thank you, Janet, for asking me.

Janet: Oh, you're welcome.

I would also like to thank our listeners for supporting Aphasia Access Conversations by listening to our podcasts. For references and resources mentioned in today's show, please see our Show Notes. They are available on our website, www.aphasia.access.org. There you can also become a member of our organization, browse our growing library of materials and find out about the Aphasia Access Academy. If you have an idea for a future podcast episode, email us at [e-mail]. For Aphasia Access Conversations, I am Janet Patterson and again, I thank you for your ongoing support of aphasia access

References

Aphasia Access Conversations

Episode #98: An Aphasia Journey Through Linguistics, Neuroplasticity, Language Treatment, Counseling, and Quality of Life: A Conversation with Chaleece Sandberg

Episode #95: Supporting Psychological Well-Being: A Conversation with Jasvinder Sekhon

Episode #89: Aphasia is a Complex Disorder: Mental Health, Language, and More – A

Conversation with Sameer Ashaie

Episode #69: Motivation and Engagement in Aphasia Rehabilitation: In Conversation with Michael Biel

Episode #67: Considering Depression In People Who Have Aphasia and Their Care Partners: In Conversation with Rebecca Hunting Pompon

Scholarly papers

Bislick, L., Dietz, A., Duncan, E. S., Garza, P., Gleason, R., Harley, D., ... & Van Allan, S. (2022). Finding “Zen” in Aphasia: The benefits of yoga as described by key stakeholders. American journal of speech-language pathology, 31(1), 133-147. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00330

Hunting Pompon, R, Amtmann, D., Bombardier, C., & Kendall, D. (2018). Modifying and validating a measure of chronic stress for people with aphasia. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 61(12):2934-2949. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-18-0173

Kagan, A., Simmons‐Mackie, N., Rowland, A., Huijbregts, M., Shumway, E., McEwen, Threats, T., & Sharp, S. (2008) Counting what counts: A framework for capturing real‐life outcomes of aphasia intervention, Aphasiology, 22(3), 258-280. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687030701282595

Laures-Gore, J., Cahana-Amitay, D., & Buchanan, T. (2019). Diurnal cortisol dynamics, perceived stress, and language production in aphasia. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 62, 1416-1426. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-18-0276

Laures-Gore, J., & Rice, K. (2019). The Simple Aphasia Stress Scale. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 62, 2855–2859. https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-L-19-0053

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urls

Aphasia & Motor Speech Disorders Lab, Georgia State University https://education.gsu.edu/csd/csdresearchoutreach/aphasia/?fbclid=IwAR1x5-CQxmiXkV4ZVcDbbt5oZmYw5VhZLKsmmw62xmh9XyC6O9sEzqV0mvU#stress-and-aphasia and https://www.facebook.com/gsuaphasia