Rare diseases · Sign or symptom
Mutism
Inability to speak
HP:0002300
What it means
Complete lack of speech or verbal communication in a person despite attempts to engage in conversation. Mutism as a phenomena assumes the individual has previous capacity for speech and in the pediatric population it assumes that the person is past the age of typical language development.
Rare diseases that can present with this38
Very common80–99%
9Common30–79%
11- Atypical Rett syndrome
- Bilateral generalized polymicrogyria
- Christianson syndrome
- Encephalocraniocutaneous lipomatosis
- Huntington disease-like 3
- Hypertrichosis cubiti
- Idiopathic catatonia
- Rapid-onset dystonia-parkinsonism
- Short stature-deafness-neutrophil dysfunction-dysmorphism syndrome
- Thumb deformity-alopecia-pigmentation anomaly syndrome
- X-linked intellectual disability, Wilson type
Sometimes5–29%
18- 7q11.23microduplication syndrome
- Behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia
- Childhood-onset schizophrenia
- Farber disease
- Frontotemporal dementia with motor neuron disease
- Huntington disease
- Inclusion body myopathy with Paget disease of bone and frontotemporal dementia
- Kleine-Levin syndrome
and 10 more in this range
The range is how often this sign appears among people diagnosed with each disease — it is not a probability of having any of them. Many of these signs also occur in common, non-rare conditions. A sign on this page is a conversation to have with a clinician, not a conclusion.
Part of the broader category
Also called: Muteness
Tracking symptoms like this for someone? Eleplan keeps symptoms, diagnoses, medications and every specialist in one plan.
Start free with EleplanThis page uses the Human Phenotype Ontology (2026-06-23) — Human Phenotype Ontology Consortium, hpo.jax.org. Disease associations from Orphanet (INSERM), CC BY 4.0. Content is educational and is not medical advice.