Broca's Schizophrenia Case Study

Gabriella Morris

Dr. Elizabeth Madden

SPA2001

November 16, 2016

Background and diagnosis

Mr. Wright was an active, social, middle-aged English teacher before being diagnosed with acquired Broca’s aphasia, which primarily affects his speech. “In Broca’s aphasia, speech is nonfluent, labored, interrupted by many word-finding pauses, and usually dysarthric. It is impoverished in function words. Abnormal word order and the inappropriate deployment of bound morphemes lead to a characteristic agrammatism.” (Whitaker, Birren, Brown, Squire, Aminoff, Darroff, & Stemmer, 2010).

A complication in Mr. Wright’s brain surgery to fix an arteriovenous malformation induced a hemorrhagic stroke that resulted in damage to the left hemisphere of his brain. The

Wright’s everyday life, and thus his speech disorder affects multiple aspects of his life. “Patients have difficulty producing grammatical sentences and their speech is limited mainly to short utterances of less than four words. Producing the right sounds or finding the right words is often a laborious process. Some persons have more difficulty using verbs than using nouns. A person with Broca’s aphasia may understand speech relatively well, particularly when the grammatical structure of the spoken language is simple. However they may have harder times understanding sentences with more complex grammatical construct. Individuals with this type of aphasia may be able to read but be limited in writing.” (@nataphasiaassoc,

His challenged verbal expression affects his personal life the most. Conversations become very arduous and long. Social interactions are awkward and often avoided. All aspects of Broca’s aphasia would affect his work, not being able to read, write, and speak at the level he used to almost completely precludes him from being an English teacher. Teaching English is about proficiency in all areas, language and writing, which has now been diminished. Things that most people regard as simple tasks are now onerous, such as ordering food at the drive through, speaking to a representative on the telephone, giving someone directions,