What is Occupational Therapy?

The main goal of occupational therapy is to enable people to participate in meaningful activities of everyday living, such as, self-care, work and leisure activities. By enabling people to engage in activities that hold meaning for them, occupational therapists aim to enable people to improve their day-to-day quality of life.

 

Occupational therapists work in a variety of settings, including communities, hospitals, rehabilitation units, schools, universities and reform centres. Examples of what occupational therapists do include:

• Adapting the home of an elderly person to make it easier and safer for them to use.
• Working with people with depression and schizophrenia using activities such as cooking a meal to foster a sense of achievement, develop personal skills, and facilitate successful experiences.
• Using play activities to improve the play and movement skills of children with cerebral palsy.
• Running life-skills programmes that enable people with intellectual disabilities to develop skills such as budgeting so that they can live more independently in the community.
• Enabling people to select and effectively use equipment and appliances, including wheelchairs, dressing aids, computers and other assistive technology, to increase their independence.
• Assessing the ability of someone with acquired brain injury to return to work and then modify that person’s work (the job itself and the workplace) to enable this, where possible, to happen.

 

Occupational therapy interventions consider:

• The individual person – improving or maintaining their level of physical, cognitive (thinking), affective (emotional) and social ability.
• The occupation – examining the self-care, leisure and work-related activities that people value in their daily lives and making changes to these activities so that they better meet the individual’s abilities.
• The environment – manipulating or adapting the physical environment so that it does not impede but, if possible, enhances performance; and influencing the social, cultural and institutional environment in ways that enable people to live as independent a life as possible and reach their full potential.