Building back better: Imagining an occupational therapy for a post-COVID-19 world

Re-imagining the vulnerability and risk framing of parents with mental illness and their children

To elicit compassion and communicate urgency to policy makers and governments, researchers and program developers have promoted a narrative of vulnerability and risk to frame the experience of families when parents have been diagnosed with mental illness. Developed within a western medicalised socio-cultural context, this frame has provided a focus on the need for prevention and early intervention in service responses while also unintentionally 'othering' these families and individualizing the 'problem'. This frame has had some unintended consequences of seeing these families through a deficit-saturated lens that misses strengths and separates family members' outcomes from each other. This paper raises questions about the continued fit of this frame and suggests a need to reimagine a new one.

Knowledge Gaps Regarding Indigenous Health in Occupational Therapy: A National Survey

Background. There is a need for the occupational therapy profession to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Calls to Action and work towards supporting the health and well-being of Indigenous Peoples. Purpose. (1) To determine the knowledge gaps of occupational therapists about Indigenous health and (2) to create recommendations to address identified gaps and inform responses from the profession. Method. A national needs survey was created and distributed to occupational therapists across Canada to determine the knowledge of occupational therapists about Indigenous health. Survey results were analyzed using thematic analysis and descriptive statistics. Findings. Data collected from 364 survey responses informed six distinct themes representing knowledge gaps of occupational therapists related to Indigenous health as follows: lack of foundational knowledge, power relations, lifelong learner, need for appropriate tools/approaches, respectful collaboration, and environmental influences. Implications. The project offers insight into the role of the occupational therapy profession in the process of reconciliation. Insights are focused on decolonizing occupational therapy practice, building trusting relationships with Indigenous Peoples, and the provision of appropriate training for occupational therapists to engage in culturally safer practices.

Nature-Based Pediatric Occupational Therapy: A Scoping Review

AIMS

Our purpose was to explore the scope of nature-based interventions used in pediatric occupational therapy and identify gaps in existing literature.

METHODS

This scoping review was guided by Arksey and O'Malley's methodology and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) framework. We searched CINAHL, PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Embase, MEDLine, and gray literature, and we hand-searched included articles' references. We included studies published through June, 2021 that were in English, described a service provided by occupational therapists, with a population with at least 50% of participants ages 0-21 years, with nature as a primary context and treatment modality. Studies were excluded if they only described animal-assisted therapies or human-made structures.

RESULTS

A total of 12 articles (two reporting quasi-experimental studies; 10 gray literature) met inclusion criteria. Articles described a variety of interventions, but there was a lack of rigor in included articles and no clear conceptualization of nature-based pediatric occupational therapy.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite practitioner interest in the topic, there are two primary gaps in the literature: lack of a clear conceptualization of nature-based practices for occupational therapy and lack of articulation of the unique contribution of occupational therapy to nature-based practices.

A call to resist occupational therapy's promotion of ableism

BACKGROUND

Critical occupational therapists have exhorted their profession to engage with disability studies' scholarship, curtail occupational therapy's promotion of ableism and amend its disabling practices. These appeals have largely been ignored despite their importance for a profession that researches, theorizes, assesses, and intervenes in the lives of disabled people.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

To interrogate occupational therapy's collusion with an ableist neoliberal agenda; and call for occupational therapists to resist their profession's disabling practices.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

This paper draws from critical disability scholarship to expose, critique and contest the ableist ideology underpinning occupational therapy.

RESULTS

Interlinked with racism, heteronormativity and gender binarism, ableism upholds certain bodies as normal and appropriate. Ableist values shape occupational therapy, with clients classified according to their proximity to 'normality', and exhorted to minimize their occupational performance deviations from dominant norms.

CONCLUSIONS

Collusion with colonialism's binary classificatory systems and neoliberal ableist norms, and avowed aspirations to improve bodies, 'normalize' performances, promote individualism, self-reliance, independence, self-care, and productivity contribute to the perception that ours is a disabling profession.

SIGNIFICANCE

This paper calls for occupational therapists to resist their profession's promotion of ableism, and refuse to collude with colonial practices that contribute to the oppression of disabled people.