Understanding The Role Of Occupational Therapy In Mental Health

By Edna Booker


The Occupational Therapy is a profession that is concerned with the promotion of health and the general well-being of an individual through occupation. Occupation is any normal or everyday activities that people are engaged in. The therapist's goal is to identify an individual's strengths and the weakness to function. In this way, they help their patients fully engage in the necessary and the desirable occupations and in turn fulfill their life roles. The occupational therapy in mental health is done by therapists who are registered as medical professionals.

The occupational therapy is any profession that attempts to improve an individual's health by engaging them in the daily meaningful activities or occupation. Through the occupations, their strengths and barriers to their functioning are identified. This helps the therapist to come up with a program that includes activities that can help them live a more fulfilling life. For a therapist to undertake this role, he/she must be a fully registered as a medical professional with the necessary qualifications.

In this case, the "occupation" in this case does not solely mean work. It is used to refer to any activity that an individual is engaged. It therefore includes activities at the workplace as well as home. Some examples include the personal hygiene, socializing, preparing a meal, painting, managing finances, and engaging in leisure activities. The therapists in this category use occupation to enhance the client's ability to live a meaningful and a more satisfying life.

The mental health occupational therapist is not very different. He relies on the client-centered approach as the means of gaining a deeper understanding of factors that relates to an individual occupations and the environment that have influence to their mental health and their overall functioning. Through the engagement in the occupations that are meaningful and purposeful, the client is able to regain a sense of achievement, well-being, and self-esteem that was affected by the illness or injury.

The second part involves identifying the factors that form a barrier to the client functioning. These are environmental factors that are part of the work or home environment. The therapist then develops the necessary strategies to overcome these barriers. The last function is the interventions through which they offer assistance to the clients in helping them overcome the practical challenges such as the independent life skills, self-care, leisure, home maintenance, and even the fitness or medical goals through focused occupational strategies.

The process starts by the assessment of the functional abilities. In this stage, the client's ability to manage work related roles and home related roles are determined. The ability to participate in activities in pursuits of the same is also assessed.

In the mental occupational therapy, the target is to treat the person as a whole, whether the problems are emanating from the physical or mental health. Today, the practice can be seen in diverse settings such as the hospitals, the outpatients, intermediate care facilities, skilled nursing facilities, work place, home, and community programs among others.

The target of the this therapy in the area of mental illness specifically targets to offer a full treatment to the person as a whole. The practice is widely used in several areas of medical profession. It can be seen in settings such as hospitals, nursing facilities, outpatients, in the work places, home based health programs, and community programs. It is a beneficial practice particularly in life skill training, cognitive rehabilitation, life balance intervention, interpersonal skill training and several other areas in life.




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1 comment:

  1. It's a very informative post. Occupational therapy is a valuable era for mental health. It can also be beneficial for coping with visual disability. In general, when dealing with vision problems people tend to be more stressful. Therefore, mental health can be effected as well. The right massage therapy plays an important role when it comes to mental health as it states in the post. As technology advances, there are more companies developing low vision aids to help people who are visually impaired or blind.

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