Cerebral Palsy Awareness 2018 - Day 11

March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month. Throughout March, I am going to try to post facts about Cerebral Palsy each day on Social Media...

Fact number eleven: There are 3 main types of Cerebral Palsy -

1. Spastic - Spasticity means the muscle tone is tight and stiff causing a decreased range of movement. As the muscle tone is so tight, spasticity can be very painful with muscles often going into spasm. It can affect many different areas of the body.

2. Dyskinetic - Sometimes referred to as Dystonic or Athetoid.

Dyskinetic Cerebral Palsy causes uncontrolled, involuntary, sustained or intermittent muscle contractions as the muscle tone changes from tight to loose.

3. Ataxic - Ataxia is defined as an inability to activate the correct pattern of muscles during movement.

Balance is affected and the person may have poor spatial awareness or find it difficult to judge their body position in relation to things around them.

It can affect the whole body.

Most people with Ataxic CP can walk but they will be unsteady with shaky movements. Speech and language can also be affected.

Many people will have a mixture of these types.

Join in!

Information retrieved from Scope - https://www.scope.org.uk/support/families/diagnosis/cerebral-palsy