CIMT
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Effects of Stroke
Impact on Occupational Performance
The impact that stroke has on an individual may affect a number of client factors and may vary depending on the individual. Deficits that can be seen in individuals with stroke include sensory perception, mental processing, emotional regulation, and motor function. Impairments in these areas can affect an individual's performance in occupations including activities of daily living, work, play, leisure, and social participation.
Mental Processing
The ability to initiate, recognize, pay attention, orient oneself, sequence, categorize, form concepts, perform spatial operations, problem solve, and learning are all mental functions and process skills that can be impaired by stroke. Deficits in these abilities negatively impacts a person's ability to carry out effective occupational performance.
Image 10: Stroke Word Map
Sensory Perception
Stroke increases the safety risk of a person because it has been observed to cause diminished protective tactile function including awareness of temperature and pain. Impairments in proprioception leads to imbalance issues, asymmetric posture, and unawareness of certain body parts.
Defects in vision may make reading difficult and bumping into objects unavoidable when walking
Loss of ability to communicate and understand language when interacting with other individuals.
Emotional Regulation
Depression, fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, emotional lability, irritability, and catastrophic reactions are just some of the few psychological changes that accompanies stroke. Some of these emotional reactions can be the result of being unable to perform tasks that were previously perceived as easy.
Image 11: Head of Sensations
Image 12: Arm Muscle
Motor function
The occurrence of stroke can result in motor dysfunction which includes changes in tone of muscle that impede normal movement patterns. Normal muscle tone stabilizes and maintains an individual during movement and is at a level that allows for ease of movement.
Abnormal muscle tone can be either hypotonus or hypertonus. Hypotonus is characterized by little resistance or flaccidity while hypertonus results in spasticity where there is too much resistance and hyperactive reflexes. Spasticity and flaccidity interferes with normal, smooth, efficient, and coordinated movement required for movement and interaction in the environment.
The approach to use constraint-induced movement therapy has been studied in recent years to ascertain its effectiveness as a rehabilitation approach to address the concern of motor function
(Atchison et al., 2012)