From: Incandescent <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [OTlist] OT Approaches used in treating schizophrenia Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 08:00:04 -0400
Hi Fiona:
I was in a rush earlier and forgot to add a major part of the OT role in the psychiatric setting. By the way as far as I have seen the majority of diagnoses in mental health tend to be one of the Schizophrenias, with Schizophrenia - Paranoid Type probably being the most frequent one.
The aspect of the OT role I referred to above is an aspect of relapse prevention. While OTs can do more direct forms of relapse prevention which can include attention training, various group approaches like social skills training, anger management, Substance Abuse Prevention and Training etc. The OT role also comprises of doing functional assessments to determine what level of independence a client can function and live at in the community after discharge. In my opinion no other profession can address this aspect like an OT can, and for this reason I believe that functional assessments are OTs' bread and butter. The underlying idea of functional assessments in mental health is that if a client is mismatched with their living environment in the community then these psychosocial stressors (arising from the mismatch between abilities and environmental demands) will result in a relapse. For this reason functional assessments focusing on ADLs and IADLs is very important. Based on a functional assessment the OT decides what level of independence can a client live at in the community i.e. fully independent (unassisted); a minimal support environment which may mean the housing situation may require once/weekly meetings with a housing support worker, medium support housing like a boarding home where all needs of a client are taken care of e.g. meals, bedmaking, personal care supplies and linen etc. Or a maximal support environment like a nursing home. And arising from functional assessments treatment comprises training in independent living skills and/or ADL training. Needless to say such group training does not always follow from a functional assessment. Because it can be done on an ongoing basis well before discharge planning begins. And these treatment groups can also be viewed as one of the activity based approaches. Hope this provides a more rounded picture of the OT role in treatment.
Best,
Biraj
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Can anyone let me know in their opinion which approaches are best used > in the treatment of schizophrenia and why? I'm an OT student and > getting confused with the different frames of references and > approaches. > > Thanks > > Fiona
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