OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

Occupational Therapy

Occupational Therapy

Occupational therapy is a health-related profession that primarily serves persons with disabilities. It is concerned with the well-being of persons in their everyday occupations (i.e., work, play, and daily living tasks). The profession sees occupation as a necessary aspect of life, contributing to physical, emotional, and cognitive well-being. Occupational therapists work with individuals whose participation in occupation is threatened or hampered by impairments and/or environmental barriers.

The origins of occupational therapy are the eighteenth-century moral treatment approach. Moral treatment was a European movement that saw mental illness as a form of demoralization emanating from disruption of a person's connection with the mores or customary activities of society. Moral treatment consisted of inviting and supporting participation in everyday activities as a means of “remoralizing” individuals by reintegrating them into ordinary routines of living. Moral treatment exported to North America and practiced in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the mid-1800s, overcrowding and underfunding of state hospitals led to its virtual demise.

In the early 1900s, a diverse group of people (architects, physicians, nurses, and leaders from the settlement movement and industrial arts) began developing a form of treatment that used participation in work, crafts, leisure activities, and self-care as a form of therapy. These early leaders included the psychiatrist Adolf Meyer and social activist Eleanor Clarke Slagle. William Rush Dunton, another psychiatrist and a descendent of Benjamin Rush (a physician and statesman who introduced moral treatment to the United States), was responsible for introducing and spreading literature and concepts from European moral treatment into occupational therapy. The early practice of the field (which quickly spread from application with persons who had mental illness to a variety of other impairments) focused on helping patients reclaim function and achieve satisfying everyday lives through active participation in work, self-care, and leisure tasks during their rehabilitation.

In mid-twentieth century, the field became more closely aligned with medicine and the medical model. As a consequence, more attention was paid to remediation of underlying impairments that contributed to disability. In the 1970s and 1980s, this emphasis on impairments was increasingly criticized from within the field. Consequently, leaders sought to return occupational therapy to a more holistic practice centered on the client's participation in everyday life occupations.

The contemporary focus of the field is, therefore, on the client's challenges or difficulties with participation in occupations. Occupationaltherapy services seek to enhance individuals' performance and satisfaction in work, play, and activities of daily living through reducing impairments and through personal and environmental adjustments. Services are offered to clients who range from preterm infants to the very old and to persons with any type of physical, sensory, cognitive, or emotional impairment. More recently, services are offered to persons whose work, play, and activities of daily living are disrupted by war, poverty, violence, and other social injustices. Occupational therapists are also increasingly involved with providing services to promote wellness and prevent loss of function.

Since the aim of occupational therapy is to enable persons to have satisfying and productive engagement in occupation, occupationaltherapists are trained to understand and address the interrelated biological, psychosocial, and environmental factors that contribute ...