Psychological Disorders: Foreign Accent Syndrome

What if one day you went to the dentist to get a simple operation done and you woke up speaking with a foreign accent? Well that is exactly what happened to a woman living in Oregon who has never been to Europe or even lived in a foreign country. Karen Butler woke up from surgery that was just getting a couple teeth removed and noticed that she had started talking weirdly. The Dentist said it would go away in a few days, but after a month she still was talking strangely. Karen Butler had developed a psychological disorder called Foreign Accent Syndrome and now she speaks with a strange accent that is a mixture of English, Irish, and perhaps some other European accents(“GREENHALGH”.) Foreign Accent Syndrome is a speech disorder that causes a sudden change to speech …show more content…
She did not realize that she had a foreign accent until her speech therapist taped her talking and played the tape back to her. She said that she lost her identity because her voice was part of her identity. People have said she sounded Slovokian, Italian, French Canadian, but people most recently say that she sounds Jamaican("Stroke Gives Woman Foreign Accent.")
A lot of people think Foreign Accent Syndrome is fake. Some question if Foreign Accent Syndrome is real or if they are being fooled into believing someone mysteriously had an accent change. Foreign Accent Syndrome is perceived as a made up syndrome and that is a major problem people with Foreign Accent Syndrome have. Usually subtle signatures can be traced to known neurological damage. A recent examination of a woman with a brain tumor traced that sometimes she would sound South American and other times she would sound like she had an English accent. The woman received brain surgery to remove the brain tumor and although her accent did not change directly after the surgery, it did change a couple weeks after the