Raven Hill Certified Hand Therapy Occupational Therapy Downeast Maine 04605

What is Occupational Therapy?

Occupational therapy is the health care profession which advocates the use of meaningful activities of daily living - those things which "occupy" our time - as a means of achieving and maintaining health. It is a rehabilitation discipline that is familiar to many people who have required assistance with recovery from traumatic injuries, stroke, heart attack, major psychiatric illness or developmental disabilities.

Occupational therapy (OT) is the oldest of the three principal rehabilitation professions, which include speech/language pathology and physical therapy, having become a recognized discipline at around the end of the 19th Century. OT first emerged working with patients in psychiatric institutions, where it focused on and taught craft skills like basket weaving, pottery and others. It was perceived that when persons with mental illness were taught useful skills which they could use to support and "occupy" themselves, they were able to focus on healthy, organized activities. This helped them to achieve better clarity of thought processes, grounded people in reality and helped to provide a more realistic and balanced sense of themselves and their self worth.

By World War I, soldiers who had survived combat with "shell shock" (now referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder) and who therefore need psychiatric interventions were seen in greater numbers than previously. Later, by World War II, many soldiers with serious combat wounds were able to survive because the medical support system had improved so dramatically. Many of these soldiers had permanent physical disabilities, and Occupational Therapists (OTs) began to find ways of helping them to complete the routine activities of daily living using creative approaches to care for themselves, operate tools and equipment, or engage in social activities.

Today an Occupational Therapist's education includes not only all of the basic principles of anatomy and physical medicine, but also encompasses sensory perceptions, psychology and developmental disabilities and how to rehabilitate them as well. The profession's original grounding in psychiatry has taught us to understand that the mind, body and spirit are best treated as a single entity in a balanced plan of care.

Occupational therapists believe that if a healthy person becomes ill or injured, he or she will recover most completely and quickly if when the ability to resume participation in activities which are important to him or her is restored. For most people this means first becoming independent again with the occupations of self care, home care or daily work. It also includes being able to rest comfortably and engage in play and recreational activities. To accomplish these things, OTs attempt to provide healthy activities which will provide the exercise and stimulation needed to help the body and mind to heal. For instance, a person with a hand injury may find that mixing and kneading bread dough is a more meaningful activity than squeezing a tennis ball or a lump of putty, and can provide equally good exercise.

In cases where the injury does not allow complete recovery, the OT is trained to teach the patient or client ways of being able to complete an important activity using modified techniques or assistive technology. This can run the spectrum of simple modifications to hand tools to extensive, high-tech modifications to automobiles or to the home environment, and everything in between.

Today OTs work in schools, hospitals, outpatient clinics, skilled nursing facilities and industrial settings as well as in mental health facilities as we did over a century ago, using the same holistic principals to help people to resume their occupations of daily living, and achieve or resume independence.