EmotionaL and Language Recovery in Aphasia (ELLA): Codesigning and Proof-of-Concept Testing a Novel Intervention
Sarah Northcott, Niamh Devane, Nicholas Behn, Shirley Thomas, Anne Morris, Laura Sockett, May Wickham, Katerina HilariPurpose:
People with aphasia are at risk of becoming depressed, anxious, and isolated. They want therapy to focus on improving communication, confidence, and finding ways to live well; family members want to be involved in the therapy process. We aimed to codesign and test a novel intervention (EmotionaL and Language recovery in Aphasia [ELLA]) that would address these priorities through integrating two evidence-based therapy approaches: elaborated semantic feature analysis (SFA), a naming therapy, and solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT), a psychological therapy.
Method:
A series of workshops were held with five people with aphasia (six workshops), three family members (three workshops), and four speech-language pathologists (SLPs; three workshops). In addition, meetings were held with experts in SFBT and elaborated SFA. This information was analyzed using qualitative content analysis and mapped onto a therapy manual. Advisors with aphasia (
Results:
Themes from the codesign stage included the following: choosing meaningful therapy targets, integrating impairment and psychological therapy, managing endings, involving family, supporting home practice, dosage and delivery, and achieving real-life change. Participants in the proof-of-concept study made significant gains on the CPIB (
Conclusions:
ELLA has been designed as a holistic, humanistic language therapy. This study suggests that ELLA may be a promising way to enable SLPs to address both emotional and language recovery.