The Life Participation Approach to Aphasia (LPAA): Making Speech Therapy Relevant and Person-Driven

All too often, treatment for aphasia is not focused on functional skills. It can also be easy for speech therapy clinicians to take the driver’s seat, and not involve the person with aphasia in their clinical decision making and goal setting – enter the Life Participation Approach to Aphasia (LPAA). Read on to find out how you can start to harness the LPAA therapy approach for you as a patient or for you as a clinician working with patients.

Over the past years, more and more attention has been drawn to the Life Participation Approach to Aphasia (LPAA for short). Some of the most well-known speech therapy clinicians in the field defined and developed this treatment approach (see the American Speech and Hearing Association website for information.)

The big idea of the approach is that therapy should be focused on functional activities that are meaningful to and even selected by the person with aphasia themselves. Rather than doing worksheets describing pictures, the person with aphasia might…

• be out in the community practicing ordering coffee,
• listening to voicemails and answering questions about them,
• or practicing reading a prescription.

We at Constant Therapy definitely ascribe to LPAA, and believe that providing functional, meaningful activities for our users is key to successful recovery. That’s why we make sure that patients can adjust therapy activities for themselves (check out our Self-Guide Mode) to allow patients to decide which Constant Therapy exercises they find most meaningful. It’s also why so many of our exercises are directly related to functional activities.

Try our therapy activities for free. Start a free 14-day trial today.

Four featured LPAA-related therapy activities

1. The Read a calendar – exercise helps improve skills in interpreting, planning, and managing daily activities within a calendar.

2. The Read a map – exercise helps improve reading, visual, and analytical skills by navigating and interpreting maps.

3. The Count money – exercise helps improve daily living skills by counting the amount of money displayed in US dollar bills & coins.

4. The Understand voicemail – activity helps improve comprehension and memory of everyday language by answering questions about voicemails.

LPAA Therapy resources

Looking for some resources as a clinician to start infusing LPAA into your practice? Check out AphasiaAccess, a group dedicated to providing support to clinicians and that focuses on LPAA as a guiding principle.