Occupational Science and Community Mental Health: Using Occupational Risk Factors as a Framework for Exploring Chronicity

This article offers an overview of Wilcock's theories, from the field of occupational science, and relates them to the community care of people with severe mental health problems. Wilcock's occupational risk factors — imbalance, deprivation and alienation — are described and are seen to be reinforced both by the adaptive nature of this client group's problems and by the difficulties experienced by community-based services as they evolve to address the unfolding complexity of clients' needs. The potential for chronicity to be compounded and deepened in this way is highlighted, with particular reference to vocational and social disability, and the possible implications of a wider acknowledgement of occupational risk factors are discussed in relation to day-to-day practice and service configuration.

Being Well, Being Musical: Music Composition as a Resource and Occupation for Older People

Introduction:

Participatory music making for older people has tended to focus on singing and performance. In a community music project undertaken by Manchester Camerata (a chamber orchestra), Blacon Community Trust and a small group of older adults, participants were given the opportunity to compose individual pieces of music interactively with professional musicians. This paper reports the findings of the research project.

Method:

An arts-based research method was adopted and incorporated action research and interpretive interactionism to articulate the experiences and perceptions of participants. Participants and Manchester Camerata musicians also worked together to represent the thematic findings of the research in a group composition.

Findings:

The findings demonstrate that individual and group music composition contributed to a sense of wellbeing through control over musical materials, opportunities for creativity and identity making, validation of life experience and social engagement with other participants and professional musicians.

Conclusion:

The results emphasised occupation as essential to health and wellbeing in the later stages of life. The findings also highlight the particularly innovative aspects of this research: (i) the use of music composition as a viable arts-in-health occupation for older people and (ii) the arts-based research method of group composition.

Occupation as described by novice occupational therapy students in Sweden: the first step in a theory generative process grounded in empirical data

A core assumption in occupational therapy is that occupation enhances health. This study is one of a series of planned studies carried out in Sweden, with the overall aim to develop a theory, based on empirical grounds, concerning the dimensions of occupation that may be useful in occupational therapy. The specific aim for this study is to examine the dimensions of occupation as generally understood among novice occupational therapy students. Grounded Theory was the chosen method. Data were collected among occupational therapy students. The students wrote down spontaneously what they considered to be included in activity. A preliminary core category "The what, why, and how of occupation" and five other categories emerged from the analysis: (1) The doing and context of occupation; (2) Motive for occupation; (3) Time and place for occupation; (4) Type of participation; and (5) Outcome of occupation. Relationships between the categories were established between the Motive for occupation and Outcome of occupation, which constitute a kind of prerequisite for occupation. The three remaining categories: The doing and context of occupation, Time and place for occupation, and Type of participation established a form for occupation. In conclusion, the study results illuminated the richness of the concept of occupation and support the core assumption in occupational therapy that occupation enhances health.