When a male fails to undergo a voice change even after attaining maturity, he is said to be suffering from Puberphonia. As a result, these Puberphonic males suffers from various psychological and social embarrassment. They start getting inferiority complex with regards to other normal males. Though generally they do not show any physical difference from other males, but they feel ashamed talking and interacting with others.
Keeping these in mind, various approaches to treatment are taken up.
How To Treat Puberphonia In Males:
Voice Therapy:
This includes the following methods of treatment:
- Coughing : The patient is made to cough pressurising his voice box. This will help to reduce the pitch.
- Speech Range Masking: The patient is made to speak in a noisy background. Hence regular practise will make the voice loud and clear.
- Glottal Attack Before a Vowel: The patient takes in air and is made to speak a vowel while breathing out. This will result in getting the correct voice.
- Relaxing the cords: In this process, the pateint practices yawning followed by sighing . Gradual words are added to exaggerated chewing. ‘Mmmmmmmmm’ is very often spoken to warm up the vocal cords.
- Visi Pitch: This is an instrument used to create critical speech sounds and voice in the male. It also displays the action to the patient thereby providing him a visual feedback.
- Humming: Here the patient is asked to hum in his highest pitch, then again humming by lowering the pitch. Thereby, helping the tuning of the vocal cords.
- Half Swallow Boom Technique: The patient swallows and says ‘Boom’ while swallowing.
Compression of Thyroid Cartilage:
In this method, pressure is applied to the ‘Adam’s Apple’ area by thumbs and then the patient is asked to speak.
Laryngeal manipulation: This is the most recent method to treat Puberphonia. It involves several instruments during the treatment. Pteint is restricted to eat 6 hours prior to treatment.Then he is examined under Xylocaine spray Anesthesia. An instrument by name Laryngoscope was placed inside the mouth and was asked to say “Eeeeee” with loudly. This is repeated 3-4 times in each sitting with the Speech Therapist. The major activity of this method is to improve the voice.
Surgical Therapy: The hyoid bone (the bone at the base of the tongue to support the tongue muscles) was displaced by dissecting the supra hyoid musculature to reduce the distance between the thyroid and cricoid cartilage.
