"Occupational therapy uses everyday life activities (occupations) to promote health, well-being, and your ability to participate in the important activities in your life."
- American Occupational Therapy Association
Occupational therapy is a skilled healthcare profession that collaborates with people, communities, and programs to increase health, wellbeing, and participation in everyday life.
In our sense of the word, occupation goes well beyond jobs. Occupations are anything that fills your time and bring purpose and meaning to your life.
Occupational therapy has a unique skill set to allow us to understand and assist people to overcome barriers that they face to engaging in their everyday life (e.g. aspects of their environment, social support, trauma, medical diagnosis, substance use, and unexpected life events).
Occupational therapy strives to meet each person or entity where it is at and walks alongside them on their journey to meeting their personal wellbeing goals.
Occupational therapy starts with an initial evaluation where the occupational therapy practitioner (OTP) will get to know a client's personal strengths and barriers, ask about their goals, and learn about their everyday routines. Collaboratively, the client and their OTP will create a treatment plan to help reach their goals through both individual and group-based treatment sessions.
Individual treatment sessions with an OTP will be tailored to a client's needs and can look quite different based on how the client learns, what motivates them, their best environment to succeed, and their overall goals. Examples of individual treatment sessions may include learning to sort and plan a week of medication, planning and preparing a meal, practicing difficult social conversation, and exploring new ways to fill your time positively.
Group treatment sessions include a single OTP with several clients and are designed to teach social skills alongside other necessary skills, such as learning to cope with stress, using community resources, or understanding your health needs. Clients in group sessions have the opportunity to not only to learn from the OTP but from their peers, who have direct lived experience.
Nonprofit agencies who serve individuals with unique barriers to health,
wellbeing, and/or quality of life can benefit from occupational therapy services to assist with the development of new programs or initiatives, work with individual clients, and/or provide skills training to all staff. For more information on how occupational therapy can meet the needs of a nonprofit agency, check out the How We Work page.
Occupational therapy services for individuals who are unhoused are an essential part of solving homelessnes, as many individuals who are unhoused are not able to become independent with housing alone. Instead, occuaptional therapy services that focus on increasing skills for engaging in necessary daily activites, manging mental and physical health conditions, and social engagement for re-integrating into their community must be provided alongside affordable housing and acess to to other necessary healthcare and social services.
To learn more about occuaptional therapy's role in the unhoused population, check out our Founder/CEO, Quinn Tyminski, OTD, OTR/L, BCMH on occupational therapy services for individuals who are unhoused.
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