Stutterers swear by program but speech experts unconvinced Deep breath ... Rohit Shah, Tania Wright, Hayley Ramsay and Chris Gerraty take part in a McGuire stuttering exercise. STUTTERERS devise tricks to disguise their problem - chivalrously opening a restaurant door to allow a dinner date to field the waiter's questions, or feigning being busy at work to dodge a phone call. But when people asked Chris Gerraty his surname over the phone, the 48-year-old guitar teacher would just hang up. "Because my worst words were those beginning with M, it was really hard to get my wife to marry me," said Mr Gerraty, who is now an instructor at the McGuire Programme, a course that more than 600 Australians have undertaken since 1998. The program is run around the world and costs $2200. It was founded in 1994 by an American, Dave McGuire, who receives 20 per cent of all course fees. His method focuses on breathing techniques similar to those employed by opera singers as well as looking interlocutors in the eye to foster confidence. Participants are told to occasionally stutter on purpose to remind themselves they are in control. Rohit Shah, who undertook a course in Melbourne, said he had stuttered all his life before enrolling in the program. When I gave presentations at university there was not even a single sentence I could speak that was really correct and coherent. He said he now spoke fluently most of the time. Another graduate, Greg Swalwell, from Tasmania, also praised the course. "The amount of times I went into McDonald's wanting a Big Mac and came out with a Fillet-o-Fish because it was easier to say ... " Mr Swalwell said. And I hate seafood, man. But speech pathologists have been slow to endorse the program. "Speech pathology practice is based on research and evidence," said Christine Stone, the president of Speech Pathology Australia. While the McGuire Programme may have results for some people who stutter, there is currently no published evidence base to support its use by speech pathologists. The program says it addresses "the whole person" not just the physical aspect of stuttering. Mr Gerraty said the course endeavoured to unlock the fears of sufferers. Dr Sally Hewat, a senior lecturer in speech pathology at the University of Newcastle, said there were many theories why people stutter and new research had found sufferers were more likely to have anxiety, but this was likely a symptom not a cause. "It is a speech co-ordination disorder," Dr Hewat said. The timing isn't quite right with the message coming from the brain and the speech motor faculties. Trials of cognitive behaviour therapy commonly employed by psychologists had reduced stutterers' anxiety but had done little to improve their speech, she said. Mr Gerraty likened the McGuire course to Alcoholics Anonymous: "It was only after 10 years that the American Medical Association acquiesced to say 'OK, maybe alcoholics can help other alcoholics, even if they aren't trained'."