Bruce Willis
Aphasia: This is behind his illness
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Hollywood star Bruce Willis has ended his acting career after being diagnosed with aphasia. What lies behind the medical term is a mystery to many. We clarify.
On March 30, 2022, the family of Bruce Willis, 67, announced on Instagram that the action star was retiring from Hollywood. The reason: “health problems”. The actor was “recently diagnosed with aphasia, which is affecting his cognitive abilities,” the joint statement said. But what is behind this disease? Many probably have little idea of the medical term. We clarify the most important questions for you.
Bruce Willis suffers from aphasia: what is the condition?
According to the leading medical reference work “Pschyrembel”, aphasia is a “central language disorder” caused by “damage to the language region” in the brain. In most cases, those affected have the problem of producing speech and understanding it. Reading and understanding written language can also be affected.
What causes aphasia?
According to the German Stroke Foundation, aphasia is caused by a stroke in 80 percent of cases. According to “Pschyrembel”, other triggers can be a hemorrhage in the brain tissue, a craniocerebral trauma, brain tumors, brain atrophy due to Alzheimer’s or meningitis, among other things.
What triggered the illness in Bruce Willis’ case is not clear from his family’s statement. Not even what form the Hollywood star is suffering from, or what exactly the symptoms are. Because “aphasias are divided into different syndromes based on the symptoms,” says the website of the German Federal Association for Logopedics.
What forms of aphasia are there?
the global aphasia is considered the most severe impairment. Those affected have severely impaired communication and language comprehension. Often they can only utter individual words, phrases, recurring syllable sequences such as “de de de” or empty phrases. Only single words can be understood.
In the Broca’s aphasia affected persons often speak in the so-called telegram style. According to the German Bundesverband für Logopädie eV, spoken sentences sound something like this: “In the picture a woman er two children it’s a boy and a girl er in the kitchen.” In addition, the flow of language is restricted.
The third syndrome will Wernicke aphasia called. Here, parts of sentences are often repeated twice, for example: “Do you understand me well?”, or paraphrased. Affected people often talk excessively, so the pace is very high and communication is incomprehensible, which is severely to moderately impaired.
the amnestic aphasia is considered to be the slightest impairment with slight word-finding difficulties. Those affected often do not come up with certain words and have to interrupt their sentences.
Important to know: According to the German Federal Association for Logopedics eV, “this syndrome approach is being discussed critically in research”. Consider a “detailed individual case description” and a “classification into fluid and non-fluid aphasias.”
Therapy and participation in social life
Ultimately, as in the case of Bruce Willis, all areas of communication (understanding, speaking, reading and writing) can be impaired in people with aphasia. It is important that those affected are treated quickly, including through speech therapy, so that the symptoms improve and they can continue to participate well in social life.
Congratulations from his blended family
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If you know about the disease, you can probably better understand what “difficult times” Bruce Willis and his family are going through. But you can also understand why the action star decided to end his career.
Sources used: pschyrembel.de, schlaganfall-hilfe.de, dbl-ev.de