- Occupational therapists help people
throughout the lifespan accomplish their daily living tasks,
learn new skills, adapt to permanent losses, fulfill their life
roles, and participate fully in life.
Defining occupational therapy
Occupational therapy as a profession concerned with promoting
health and well-being through occupation. The primary goal of
occupational therapy is to enable people to participate in the
activities of everyday life. Occupational therapists achieve this
outcome by enhancing the individual's ability to participate, by
modifying the environment, or by adapting the activity to better
support participation.
Another way of thinking about the ideas contained in these
definitions could be: occupational therapy is about understanding
the importance of an activity to an individual, being able to
analyze the physical, mental and social components of the activity
and then adapting the activity, the environment and/or the person
to enable them to resume the activity. Occupational therapists
would ask, "Why does this person have difficulties managing his or
her daily activities (or occupations), and what can we adapt to
make it possible for him or her to manage better and how will this
then impact his or her health and well-being?”
Occupational therapy gives people the "skills for the job of
living" necessary for "living life to its fullest.
Evolution of occupational therapy
The philosophy of occupational therapy has evolved over the
history of the profession. The philosophy articulated by the
founders that have owed much to the ideals of romanticism,
pragmatism and humanism which are collectively considered the
fundamental ideologies of the past century.
William Rush Dunton, the creator of the National Society for the
Promotion of Occupational Therapy, now the American Occupational
Therapy Association, sought to promote the ideas that occupation
is a basic human need, and that occupation was therapeutic. From
his statements, came some of the basic assumptions of occupational
therapy, which include:
- Occupation has an effect on health and
well-being.
- Occupation creates structure and
organizes time.
- Occupation brings meaning to life,
culturally and personally.
- Occupations are individual. People
value different occupations.
These have been elaborated over time to
form the values which underpin the Codes of Ethics issued by each
national association. However, the relevance of occupation to
health and well-being remains the central theme. Influenced by
criticism from medicine and the multitude of physical disabilities
resulting from World War II , occupational therapy adopted a more
reductionistic philosophy for a time. While this approach lead to
developments in technical knowledge about occupational
performance, clinicians became increasingly disillusioned and
re-considered these beliefs. As a result, client centeredness and
occupation are re-emerging as dominant themes in the profession,
perhaps indicating growing maturity and self confidence. Over the
past century, the underlying philosophy of occupational therapy
has evolved from being a diversion from illness, to treatment, to
enablement through meaningful occupation. This became evident
through the development and widespread adoption of the Canadian
Model of Occupational Performance.
The two most commonly mentioned values are that occupation is
essential for health and the concept of holism. However, there
have been some dissenting voices. Mocellin in particular advocated
abandoning the notion of health through occupation as obsolete in
the modern world and questioned the appropriateness of advocating
holism when practice rarely supports it[38][39][40]. The values
formulated by the American Association of Occupational Therapists
have also been critiqued as being therapist centred and not
reflecting the modern reality of multicultural practice.
Central to the philosophy of occupational therapy is the concept
of occupational performance. In considering occupational
performance the therapist must consider the many factors which
comprise overall performance. This concept is made more tangible
using models such as the person-environment-occupation model
proposed by Law et al. This approach highlights the importance of
satisfactions in one's occupations, broadening the aim of
occupational therapy beyond the mere completion of tasks to the
holistic achievement of personal wellbeing. |
