What Do Occupational Therapists Do in Behavioral Health?
As we all know, occupational therapists help people regain, develop, or master every day skills to live independent, productive and satisfying lives, and that goes for whatever population we are working with. We assess clients with physical and mental challenges to develop activities of daily living that will best fit those clients. We say that we work with the whole person, but in practice we oftentimes end up dividing people up into people with physical disabilities and people with mental illness.
Physical Disabilities
With clients that have physical disabilities, we tend to first focus on the critical daily routine, such as basic ADLs; dressing, grooming, bathing, eating. We then build a program around the skills needed to perform those tasks, such as participating in education, caring for the home, IADLs, caring for family, seeking or maintaining employment, and getting back out into the community.
Mental Illness
For the client with mental illness, our goals are based on the ability to function independently, just as they are with any other client. In treating mental or emotional challenges, the occupational therapy program focuses on areas such as managing time, working productively with others, and enjoying leisure.
Role of Occupational Therapy on the Interdisciplinary Team
The occupational therapist's role on an interdisciplinary team varies depending on the team. As we know, the occupational therapist's focus is on assessment and remediation of performance of work, leisure and self care, and the underlying skills required to accomplish those activities. Occupational therapist's focus is on supporting the health and participation in life through engagement and occupation (AOTA, 2008, p. 628). We are evaluating and treating function, defined as a person's ability to perform a specific daily life activity (Doucet & Gutman, 2013, p. 7). In doing so, we need to look at the individual's strength and deficits, the activities that the individual needs and wants to perform, and then the social and economic environmental resources available to the individual to be able to perform those activities.
Domain of OT: What Do We Consider
According to the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework: Domain and Process 3rd Edition, the areas that we consider include occupations, which include ADLs, IADLs, work, play, leisure, rest and self care, education and social participation; client factors; activity demands; performance skills; performance patterns; context and environment. We consider all these domains just as we do in any other setting. We are going to be going over these during this presentation, some in more detail than others.
