Our Program
The Eastern Virginia Medical School Fluency Program treats stuttering as a behavioral problem. We do not perceive stuttering as the consequence of a complex emotional disorder. We can confidently say that after decades of helping stutterers, the proper approach to treating this perplexing, long-standing affliction is to accurately redevelop the physical properties of speech.
The EVMS Fluency Program employs laboratory derived principles of learning in the development of new speech skills. During the therapy program, physical mechanisms used in the production of speech are precisely and systematically retrained. Participants in the EVMS Fluency Program relearn the proper means of producing the elementary sounds of speech. The stutterers then rebuild their ability to correctly produce syllables, words and, ultimately, complete sentences.
In The News
- Read ANN LANDERS' column, where she says "Program may be answer for those who stutter..."
- Virginia Pilot newspaper - Front page, Sunday, December 26, 2015. The Gift of Speech: Students come from across the globe to tackle stuttering.
- Watch the CBS news story covering Ross Barrett and his successful program graduates.
- WVEC-TV Interview with Ross Barrett
Patient Testimonials
Ross S. Barrett, M.A., CCC/SLP
Instructor of Clinical Otolaryngology
EVMS Fluency Program Director
Board Recognized Fluency Specialist
Learn more about Ross Barrett
I was really nervous the day I boarded my airplane for Norfolk, Virginia. I was beginning to have second thoughts - why was I doing this? What did I really know about this Ross Barrett and his stuttering therapy program? I was traveling hundreds of miles to a strange city where I had never been before and knew no one. What if it turned out to be a bust? But just wait a minute.
Ross had sounded sincere on the telephone, and he was an instructor at the Eastern Virginia Medical School. The materials and information he had sent me were unique - Ross did not treat stuttering as a psychological problem, but simply as a learned behavior that could be modified. He did not promise a "magic cure." He did say that if I was willing to work hard at learning what he referred to as “targets”, fluency would follow. It was worth a shot...