Beyond Words: How do therapists understand and experience working with clients who have speech or communication disabilities?

This study explores how clinically qualified counsellors and psychotherapists experience working with clients who have speech and communication disabilities.

Communication is central to counselling and psychotherapy; however, individuals with communication disabilities are widely reported to face barriers to accessing psychological support and to experience increased psychological distress. While existing literature highlights the mental health impact of communication disability and outlines ethical and legal obligations for practitioners to make reasonable adjustments, there is a notable lack of empirical research examining therapists’ lived experiences of this work.

This study seeks to address this gap by centring therapists’ perspectives. The research is situated within an interpretative phenomenological framework and employs Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as the methodological approach. IPA is well-suited to exploring lived experience and meaning-making in under-researched areas of professional practice and allows for an in-depth examination of how therapists understand and interpret their clinical work within complex relational and ethical contexts.

A qualitative design will be used, involving semi-structured interviews with a small, purposive sample of clinically qualified counsellors and psychotherapists who have experience of working therapeutically with at least one adult client with a speech or communication disability. Participants will be registered with a recognised professional body.

Interviews will invite reflection on work experiences, including perceived challenges, adaptations made in practice, ethical considerations, and feelings of competence or uncertainty. Interviews will be audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using the established IPA stages, beginning with detailed idiographic analysis before identifying patterns across cases. Reflexivity will be maintained throughout the research process, with careful attention to the researcher’s positionality.

Ethical approval has been obtained, and participants will be provided with information about support should participation evoke any distress.

This study aims to contribute to counselling and psychotherapy research by amplifying therapists’ voices in an area where empirical evidence is currently limited.
Findings may inform ethical practice, training, and supervision, hopefully supporting the development of more inclusive and accessible therapeutic services.

To view the participant information sheet, please see here.
To take part or for more information, please see here.