ABSTRACT
Communication problems, at any age, can lead to emotional and psychological difficulties both for the sufferer and their families and friends. The lack of awareness in the general public, and in medical and social service workers, of how pervasive is the human need to communicate, and therefore how agonising the loss of that ability can be — combined with the invisible nature of the handicap — has resulted in many communicatively impaired people becoming isolated and feeling ‘worthless’. Such outcomes are often exaggerated in the case of older people, who must also face numerous other changes in their way of life, and in the way others perceive them. The words of Sartre who reflected that ‘My old age is other people’ seem particularly poignant.
