A patient sits silently through an entire interview, producing no spoken words at all despite appearing alert and occasionally nodding, though he does eventually write brief answers on a notepad when offered one. Before revealing the answer: is this stammering?
No, this is more consistent with mutism than with stammering. Stammering involves speech that is present but disrupted in its flow; here, no spoken words are produced at all, with communication occurring only through writing, which is the defining pattern of mutism rather than a broken but continuing flow of speech.
References
- Casey, P. & Kelly, B. (2019). Fish's Clinical Psychopathology, 4th ed. Ch. 4, 'Disorders of Thought and Speech'.