Aphasia Book Club
Aphasia Book Club
The Aphasia Book Club is a program designed for adults who have aphasia as a result of a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or other neurological condition. People with aphasia may have difficulty with understanding spoken or written language and expressing themselves through writing and speaking. Our members usually have mild difficulty with understanding and mild to moderate difficulty with expressing themselves. Some of our members use audiobooks to support their participation if reading is more difficult than listening.
The group focuses on maintaining communication abilities and strategies learned in individual therapy by, stimulating all communication modalities (i.e., speaking, listening, reading and writing). The Aphasia Book Club offers people with aphasia who love to read but may not be able to participate in a typical type of community book club with an opportunity to read books and discuss them with other people with aphasia. The book club also serves as a support system.
This group program accepts self-referrals as well as referrals from speech-language pathologists, other health professionals, and family members for people with aphasia living in Nova Scotia.
What to expect at a group session?
The sessions are run by graduate student clinicians in speech-language pathology with supervision by a registered speech-language pathologist from the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
We read one book per term. Terms are 8-9 weeks long. Participants read around 30-40 pages of a book per week. In advance of each meeting, they are emailed a story map that summarizes the assigned reading, multiple-choice and discussion questions. At the weekly meeting, the story map is reviewed, then participants share their answers to the multiple-choice questions and have conversations about the discussion questions.
Where do sessions take place?
All sessions are currently conducted online via ZOOM for Healthcare.
When are sessions held?
FALL 2023
- Online (Zoom) – Friday afternoon
Winter 2024
- Online (Zoom) – To be scheduled
How to join the group?
Contact the supervisor of the group, Dr. Ellen Hickey at ehickey@dal.ca or speechclinics@dal.ca or call 902.494.7052
There is an evaluation process to determine candidacy for participation.