Here's How to Teach Voice and Communication Skills to Transgender Women

"Here's How to Teach Voice and Communication Skills to Transgender Women'' is a detailed guide to help speech-language pathologists provide intervention for Male-to-Female (MtF) trans clients during the transition process. The empirically supported program guides SLPs to safely modify a MtF trans individual's voice through behavioral modification therapy. SLPs can teach this population how to safely modify their voice through good vocal hygiene, vocal relaxation, breathing support, pitch, resonance, breathiness, and verbal and nonverbal communication.

This text presents the Voice and Communication Program for Transgender Women (VCMtF), which was developed to train graduate speech-language pathology students how to deliver voice and communication services. The purpose of this text is to share the VCMtF Program with other speech-language pathologists who will provide voice and communication services to transgender women. The VCMtF Program is unique because it is an easy to use, manualized program that systematically targets voice and verbal and nonverbal communication. Included in this text are resources for the clinician, an introduction to the VCMtF Program, methods and materials for assessment, and step-by-step program sessions.

The VCMtF Program is divided into eight sessions with step-by-step instructions for every exercise. Each session is organized using material lists, approximate times, teaching methods, check-ins, feedback, and homework. There are check boxes to mark off the completion of exercises in each area of the program and there is space for the SLP to make clinical observations. Exercises and targets are set up within a hierarchy so that the level of difficulty may be tailored to each client's abilities and how far they have advanced in the program. Also included is a PluralPlus companion website with videos to support the exercises used in the program.