Abstract
In the recent practices of speech therapy for the aphasic patients, it has been often claimed that the goal of language intervention should be to help the patients accepting their own disabilities, challenging their handicaps, and attaining more participation in their daily lives. This claim reasonably means that speech therapists should actively play an important role to reduce a variety of barriers the patients might meet in each phase of their rehabilitative efforts.
This paper first presents a view point that any individual keeps his/her daily living in relation with others, and therefore an acquired illness might not only bring negative effects but also pose a substantially positive meaning to the life of patient. Second, from a perspective of speech therapist responsible for supporting aphasic patients to recover the worth of living, possible strategies for involving volunteers into the ordinary intervention practices are illustlated from our experiences with both outpatient and inpatient aphasic individuals. Also described is an example of voluntary activity by aphasic patients themselves to play music with tone-chimes in the community. Finnaly, implications of volunteer activities beyond the limitation of medical treatment are considered for the future practices in language intervention with aphasic patients.
