Enabling Occupational Therapy: Moving beyond the Generalist vs Specialist Debate in Community Mental Health

Occupational therapists working in community mental health teams continue to debate their role within a case management model of service. They are caught between a service system, requiring them to work as generalist care coordinators, and a profession working to distinguish itself in a multi-disciplinary context. This opinion piece moves beyond the debate of generalist/specialist roles to propose that occupational therapists can define their role and increase awareness of the profession's value by demonstrating leadership in everyday practice. The Leadership in Enabling Occupation Model is presented as a reflective tool for enabling occupational therapy contributions within community mental health care.

Is it Time for a Mental Health Pathway in Undergraduate Programmes?

As a group of occupational therapists working in mental health practice, education and research, we have concerns about the development and honing of occupational therapists' knowledge and skills for modern mental health practice. There are always competing priorities in occupational therapy curricula, but recent mental health policy and legislative developments prompted us to question whether the profession should radically reorganise the delivery of occupational therapy education in the United Kingdom. We recommend a wide debate about occupational therapy education and an exploration of different models of curriculum design. This opinion piece is a contribution to this debate.

Making audit a part of practice in multidisciplinary teams

Recently, there has been an increased research focus on ways of working and roles within multidisciplinary teams, especially mental health teams (Onyett, 2003; Harrison, 2005a,b). Less has been written about the specific tasks that various professions undertake and the distinctive skills they bring to the team environment.