What is Aphasia, the condition Bruce Willis has been diagnosed with?
What you need to know about Bruce Willis’ recent diagnosis, which evidently forced him to retire from his acting career.
Bruce Willis retires due to Aphasia diagnosis. Image: Instagram
The 67-year-old Die Hard actor, Bruce Willis’ family has released a statement confirming that he will be retiring from acting due to him recently being diagnosed with Aphasia.
What is Aphasia?
According to Hopkins Medicine, Bruce Willis’ condition is a language disorder caused by damage in a specific area of the brain that controls language expression and comprehension.
Depending on the areas of the brain that have been affected, a person might have different levels of ability to speak to and understand others.
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With Broca’s Aphasia a person’s speech output is severely reduced and it is mainly limited to short utterances of less than four words.
A person with this type of the disorder may understand speech relatively well and be able to read, but is usually limited when it comes to writing.
Someone suffering from Mixed Non-fluent Aphasia will have sparse and effortful speech and will remain limited in comprehension of speech. These patients also don’t read or write beyond elementary level.
Aphasia.org defines Fluent Aphasia (also known as Wernicke’s Aphasia) as a condition in which a person’s ability to grasp the meaning of spoken word is chiefly impaired, while the ease of producing connected speech is not affected that much.
Speech is, however far from normal in the case of Wernicke’s Aphasia and sentences don’t necessarily fit together.
People who have Anomic Aphasia are left with the persistent inability to supply words for the very things they want to talk about – particularly significant nouns and verbs.
They usually understand speech well, and they can also read adequately in most cases, but the difficulty of finding words is as evident in both writing and speech.
Primary Proressive Aphasia (PPA) is a neurological syndrome in which language capabilities become impaired over time.
This type of Aphasia is normally caused by neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s Disease or Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration.
It is also possible for some of the components of a complex Aphasia syndrome to occur in isolation, like reading disorders (alexia) or disorders affecting both reading and writing (alexia and agraphia), following a stroke.
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What are the symptoms?
The consumer version of MSD Manual says the main symptoms for people – like Bruce Willis – who suffer from this condition include difficulty of reading, writing, speaking, understanding or repeating language.
The manual also states that people suffering from Aphasia may experience loss of the ability to comprehend written words (alexia), the loss of ability to recall or say the names of objects (anomia), the loss of the ability to repeat words, phrases or sentences (conduction aphasia) and the loss of almost all ability to understand, speak or write language (global aphasia).
What causes the condition?
Aphasia can be caused by a stroke, a head injury or a brain infection. In these cases the condition doesn’t worsen over time. Hopkins Medicine also says that Aphasia may be caused by dementia.
It can also be the result from a progressive disorder like an enlarging brain tumour, in which case the condition of the illness can progressively worsen.
How is Aphasia diagnosed?
Doctors are normally able to diagnose the condition by talking to a person and asking a few questions.
They need to make sure that the apparent problems with language aren’t caused by something else like problems with hearing or vision, though.
According to Hopkins Medicine, the extent of the disorder and the prediction for successful treatment may be assessed and confirmed by a set of comprehensive language tests conducted by a speech-language pathologist.
These tests include studying speech, naming, repetition, comprehension, reading and writing.
Imaging procedures may also be utilised to make a diagnosis. CT scans and MRIs can provide detailed images of the brain and are more detailed than normal x-rays.
How is the condition treated?
Depending on age, overall health, a person’s medical history, the cause and extent of the disorder and many other aspects, specific treatment for Aphasia will be discussed with the relevant medical practitioner.
The goal of treatment is to improve a person’s ability to communicate through methods that may include speech-language therapy, nonverbal communication therapies like computers and pictures and group therapy for patients and their families.
How to handle a person with Aphasia
Although some people recover from the condition without treatment, some amount of Aphasia typically remains and therefore living with the disorder is a reality one must adjust to once diagnosed.
This can be frustrating for both the patient and family members.
According to Hopkins Medicine, it is important to include a person with Aphasia in conversations and to simplify language by using short, simple sentences. Repeating keywords and clarifying the meaning by writing them down may also help.
Hopkins Medicine also suggests that a natural conversational manner should be used at an adult level and that all types of communication, including speech, gestures, pointing and drawing should be encouraged. Correcting a person’s speech won’t help and patience is definitely a virtue in these situations as you need to give the person plenty of time to express himself.
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