Friends, Families & Carers | Aphasia Advice

Living with aphasia stories

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Aphasia affects the ability to use and understand language (letters, words and sentences) for speaking and writing. It does not affect a person’s intelligence.

This loss of conversation impacts the whole family. It can profoundly affect relationships and family dynamics. The hidden difficulties of aphasia can be challenging for others to understand.

“Living with someone with aphasia has been very frustrating. Don't take me the wrong way - it's frustrating for them too. Seeing the difficulty in finding a word to make a sentence can be heart breaking... I have really tried to have fun with this every day.”

How can you help?

People with aphasia are all affected differently.

It’s important to find successful ways to support conversations with anyone who has aphasia.

“Laugh together when it's going wrong. Stroke survivors often suffer from depression. I've really tried to combat this with us being able to laugh at the mistakes and working together to resolve things.”

Advice sheet

Here’s an example of a helpful advice sheet given to friends and family to raise awareness of what aphasia is like and how to help.