The influence of stuttering and co-occurring disorders on job difficulties among adults who stutter

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have indicated that stuttering is often accompanied by co-occurring disorders, including social anxiety disorder, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although stuttering can have negative influences within the workplace, the association between these co-occurring disorders and individuals’ jobs is unclear. We investigated the association of stuttering and co-occurring disorders with job difficulties among adults who stutter (AWS). A questionnaire was administered to 110 Japanese AWS, gaining information on their individual and job demographics, self-rated stuttering severity, and screening scales assessing social anxiety disorder, ADHD, and ASD. We compared participants’ job demographics between the age-matched group of individuals who achieved the cut-off scores for co-occurring social anxiety disorder, ADHD, or ASD, and the group who did not reach the cut-off scores for any of these disorders. In total, 42.7%, 21.8%, and 12.7% of participants achieved the cut-off scores of social anxiety disorder, ADHD, and ASD, respectively. We found that self-rated job difficulties are positively correlated with screening scores of social anxiety disorder and self-rated stuttering severity. The group comparison revealed that those with suspicions of co-occurring disorders also rated their self-rated job difficulties as significantly more severe than did the stuttering-only group. Along with stuttering disfluency, social anxiety disorder and other co-occurring disorders have a negative association with the workplace experiences of AWS. In assessing the workplace conditions of AWS, we should comprehensively evaluate co-occurring disorders. Our results also highlight the importance of interventions aimed at preventing or alleviating the social anxiety of AWS.

KEYWORDS:

• Stuttering
• employment
• co-occurring disorder
• neurodevelopmental disorder

Author contributions

DI and SM conceived and designed the experiments. DI performed the investigation and analysed the data. DI and SM both contributed to the writing of this manuscript.

Data availability statement

Raw data were generated at the Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba. Derived data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, DI, on request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI [grant number 19J10340].