Congratulations to Professor Ross Menzies!
Professor Ross Menzies, the clinical psychologist on the Australian Stuttering Research Centre (ASRC) team, has just been awarded the Distinguished Career Award by the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy (AACBT) (https://www.aacbt.org.au/). This most prestigious award is for exceptional research contributions, across a career, to the development and understanding of cognitive and behavioural procedures. It is not given every year.
So much of Professor Menzies’s work in developing cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) programs has been here at the ASRC. Over many years, he has led the team in developing a CBT program designed specifically for adults who stutter—originally called CBTpsych—and submitting this program to randomised controlled trials. This has included comparing the program with and without speech treatment. This research has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, and the results have been outstanding.
An exciting development is that a standalone internet version of CBTpsych, titled iGlebe, is now accessible on our website and is available to the general public at no cost. It is being accessed by people who stutter and speech clinicians around the world, with around 1200 users in 2022 to date. It is an important component of our ASRC standalone internet stuttering clinic, which is still under development.
The building and trialling of CBTpsych and iGlebe has been reported in five publications in peer-reviewed professional journals, including two in the Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research. References for these publications can be found on the Publications page of our website.
An important project led by Professor Menzies and the team, which has been critical for underpinning our CBT program, is the development of the Unhelpful Thoughts and Beliefs About Stuttering (UTBAS) scales. The items in this assessment, which are based on comments made to Professor Menzies in his clinical practice by adults who stutter, are the basis of the CBTpsych and iGlebe protocols. The UTBAS scales have now been translated into 14 languages, which are available on the UTBAS page of our website. References for five publications by Professor Menzies and the team about the development of the UTBAS, as well as more general information about social anxiety and stuttering, can also be found on the Publications page of our website.
As is evident, Professor Menzies has led the team in enormous leaps and bounds in understanding the nature and treatment of stuttering-related social anxiety and the best way to manage it. Along with his work in areas other than stuttering, it is clearly not surprising that Professor Menzies has received this prestigious AACBT award for his contribution to the development and understanding of cognitive and behavioural procedures!