LSVT LOUD
What is LSVT LOUD?
LSVT LOUD refers to the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment. LSVT LOUD is an effective speech treatment for people with Parkinson's disease (PD) and other neurological conditions. LSVT LOUD trains people with PD to use their voice at a more normal loudness level while speaking at home, work, or in the community. Key to the treatment is helping people "recalibrate" their perceptions so they know how loud or soft they sound to other people and can feel comfortable using a stronger voice at a normal loudness level.
PD can often affect communication in 2 ways:
Creating a mismatch between how you think you're talking vs how you actually sound
Difficulty coming up with words you want to say
LSVT LOUD directly addresses these symptoms for proven communication improvements.
How does the program work?
LSVT LOUD is an intensive, one-on-one treatment delivered over one month’s time:
- One-hour sessions
- Four sessions per week
- Four weeks in a row
- Daily homework and carryover exercises
The exercises address the ability to physically get loud and to retrain the patient to use a loud voice in a healthy manner with long-term carry over.
LSVT LOUD improves:
Vocal Loudness - LOUD treatment helps you to speak with a voice and volume that's easy for others to hear and understand.
Communication - Improved speech intelligibility from calibrated vocal loudness results in fewer communicative breakdowns.
Self Esteem - Being able to be understood easily increases confidence in social situations and feeling included in conversations.
What exercises are performed?
Patients will perform a series of sustained "AH" sounds at various pitches as well as a series of functional phrases. The functional phrases will be selected by the patient based on phrases that they say on a daily basis and are meaningful to them. These phrases will be targeted to generalize the practiced loudness to everyday speech. Other hierarchical verbal expression tasks are completed to practice using the LOUD voice in different settings. These tasks start at the word level and advance to the conversation level by the end of the program.