Nonorganic Voice Disorder
Nonorganic voice disorder is a persistent voice change found not to be infectious, irritative, neurogenic, or the result of drug side effect. Instead, this represents a behavioral disturbance that may be associated with secondary gain. Often the vocal phenomenology of a nonorganic voice disorder-induced voice change is stereotypical and predictable in its manifestations; it is most often seen in young women.
Audio Examples
Patient 01
Voice change after cervical spine surgery did not resolve, since it was nonorganic rather than neurological in nature. After diagnosis and initial treatment, she demonstrates “positive and negative practice” whereby she alternates between normal and abnormal voice.
Patient 02
This person developed an unreliable, rapidly changing voice after a URI months earlier. The diagnosis: a nonorganic disorder, with rapid normalization with brief coaching. Sometimes reversion to normal occurs almost instantaneously during the initial encounter.
Example 1
Nonorganic voice (1 of 2)
Nonorganic voice (2 of 2)
Example 2
Nonorganic voice (1 of 4)
Voicing position (2 of 4)
Nonorganic vocal cord posturing (3 of 4)
Flaccidity is gone (4 of 4)
Example 3
Nonorganic voice (1 of 3)
Nonorganic voice (2 of 3)
Growling voice (3 of 3)
Share this article
Nonorganic Voice Loss (or Functional Dysphonia)
In this video, you will see what the larynx looks like when a person with a nonorganic voice disorder makes voice, you will hear the clinician beginning to coax out the patient’s normal voice, and you will hear the patient learning to control this re-discovered normal voice.