Who Should Be on Your Tardive Dyskinesia Care Team?

Physical Therapist

Physical therapy can help you combat some of those involuntary movements and improve your ability to move more like you once did, she says.

Usually, physical therapy starts with an assessment of your functional abilities and a discussion about how tardive dyskinesia interferes with your daily life, she says. Based on the assessment, the therapist can then develop an individualized treatment plan to address those specific needs.

For example, if tardive dyskinesia is affecting your legs, you may have trouble walking, climbing stairs, or keeping your balance. “In that situation, a person could be referred to us for some gait retraining,” says Leach. Repetition and task practice may be used to work on these issues, she says.

“We can also use different visual, auditory, verbal, or even tactile cuing to help bring awareness to these movement patterns to help make them a little more typical or safe,” Leach says. Therapists can also wrap your limbs with a bandage or a sling to improve sensory input, which can help bring your attention to movements, she says.

“Similarly, weight-bearing activities can help people with tardive dyskinesia have more sensory input through their limbs so that they can try to retrain their movement patterns,” says Leach.

“Tardive dyskinesia can also keep people from moving as much, so they may just be generally deconditioned,” she says. “A physical therapist can design an individualized plan for getting more physical activity.”