realhousewife
APD is one of the first medical issues which requires a multi - discipline (multi - professional) assessment and diagnosis. And the biggest problem still is having a full understanding of the implications of living with APD, and how it can affect many areas of our day to day lives. What the leading researchers call a lack of joined up thinking, lots of information and understanding regarding some specific issues, but not brought together into an overall perspective all the potential issues.
Currently APD should be assessed and diagnosed by a multi- discipline team. An audiologist to assess and diagnose the APD issues, and the severity or degree of the auditory processing problems. A Speech and Language Pathologist to assess how the diagnosed APD issues can affect life long speech and language development. And a Psychologist to assess problems of living with the diagnosed APD problems. The biggest problem at this point in time is the lack of understanding of APD by these three different professions and professional bodies, and in some cases a reluctance or lack of willingness to understand APD. For may of these professionals the problem is that there is no known cure, which for many professionals is an unwanted over complication.
So living with APD is about understanding the limitations that APD imposes on each individual diagnosed as having APD, there are many various subtypes of APD, and more importantly understanding how each individual who has APD has developed their own alternative compensating cognitive abilities or coping strategies to work around their disability. This means that others need to understand how to use these alternative forms of communication, and possible variations of format may help with types of communication we have problems accessing. This has to be done on an individual basis due to complexities of the issues i have just tried to describe.
So in answer to your question, yes SALTs are part of the therapy process, unfortunately they are currently unable to provide a lifelong support option, which will really only be required each time the vocabulary. jargon, language we use in our daily lives changes as we progress through each new venture of life. ( we need help to pronounce and recognise new words, sets of words etc).
You are probably aware of the programs which claim to provide some help for those who have APD, and some have even been marketed as a cure. You could have a look at the research into some of these of programs
There are what are sometimes called FM systems, which were originally created for the hearing impaired, the speaker has a microphone, and the recipient has either a speaker or headphones. This provides a consistent good quality sound source, but does not cure or improve our processing abilities.
Living with APD is about anticipating what will happen tomorrow, anticipating the questions we may be asked, and the more familiar we are with these potential questions the better able we are to provide the best answers. Each new situation, task, social activity, may require an new set of coping strategies or for existing coping strategies to be modified, either of which will need to be integrated into our coping strategy library. So we like routines and familiar surroundings as it provides us with not too many unexpected processing problems, and provide some reminders of the coping strategies we may need for a specific task etc.
I hope this helps in some way.