My Experience

While on my placement I was fortunate to be able to have a look at the mirror therapy box and be able to learn about its use and how it works. I was fortunate to end up with a patient on my caseload that was appropriate to use mirror therapy as part of her rehabilitation programme. This patient had experienced a stroke resulting in right sided hemiplegia and inattention, apraxia, dyspraxia and dressing apraxia.

Before and after completing mirror therapy I assessed the patient’s functional ability of her right arm (affected arm). In comparing the two assessments the patient had increased her functional ability of her right hand. It surprised me how much the clients function changed with only one session. During the session when the patient’s affected right arm was placed within the box the patient had no active movement of the arm so was passively moved by myself.

This opportunity enabled me to experience on some of the strengths and limitations of the mirror box. During the mirror box intervention I observed ideomotor apraxia as a symptom of my patients following her stroke. Ideomotor apraxia is “the inability to imitate gestures or perform a purposeful motor task on command even though the patient fully understands the idea or concept of the task” (Zoltan, 1996) the patient’s symptom of ideomotor apraxia made the mirror box therapy very hard to facilitate as she had difficulty in imitating the movements requested.

Overall I feel that mirror therapy would be difficult to facilitate for this patient but also be very successful.


Zoltan, B. (1996). Vision, perception, and cognition: a manual for the evaluation and treatment of the neurologically impaired adult (3rd ed., pp. 53-68). N.p.: Slack Incorporated.