I need 2-3 paragraphs for a peer response with 1 article based on this post. Thank you

The oc-cupational therapy team would like to be included in your agency to assist clients of A Bridge to Growth in their recovery process. Our proposal will explain the unique and potent contributions that we can provide to help clients with mental illness. One of our roles in mental health is to increase an individual’s ability to live as independently as possible while engaging in meaningful and productive activities(AOTA,2016). Any mental illness can impact on the basic skills that are needed for day to day independent functioning. As occupational therapy practitioners, we work with clients to establish goals related to improving participation in one’s home, school, workplace, and community. We teach and facilitate skills in the areas of problem solving, medication management, home and community safety, social skills, activities of daily living, vocational and leisure interests, stress management, and more. Occupational therapy interventions have been shown to improve symptom and medication management as well as increase social skills, social participation, and personal well-being for people experiencing serious mental illness. These interventions have also been show to decrease negative psychological symptoms, hospital admissions and readmissions, poor treatment compliance, and social exclusion(AOTA, 2016).

Occupational Therapy Intervention for Patients with Eating Disorders

Occupational Therapy (OT) helps individuals with eating disorders reestablish previous healthy occupations and the life balance they once had using purposeful activity (Clark & Nayar, 2012). Some examples of intervention and activities that we can perform with clients are planning and preparing snacks/meals, grocery shopping, leisure and hobby exploration, socializing with peers during group games and more.

Occupational Therapy Intervention for Patients with Depression

As occupational therapy practitioners, our focus when working with patients with depression is on participation in valued occupations(Costa,2008). We help them experience the satisfaction that accompanies meaningful occupations and participation. We teach our clients how to incorporate more pleasant activities into their daily lives. We also address work reintegration through occupational assessment, role play, and gradual work re-entry(Costa,2008).

Strategies that we will use to make sure that OT services for clients of A Bridge to Growth are culturally sensitive, culturally and environmentally appropriate and culturally competent.

Environmental and cultural considerations have unique implications for mental health as occupational therapy practitioners work together with their clients toward the goal of personal recovery. As OT practitioners, we are planning to use strategies with our clients of A Bridge to Growth to make sure that our services are culturally sensitive and competent and culturally and environmentally appropriate.

Culturally sensitive

We are a client-centered practice that do not define a person by a label or create bias and stereotypes. We identify each client as she or he wants to be identified, keeping in mind the generational, geographic, situational, and personal differences affecting choice of terms. We are very sensitive to different cultural standards of speech, including rate of speech. Before treating our clients, we familiarize our self with culturally acceptable use of eye contact, proximity of speakers, and hand gestures.

Culturally and environmentally appropriate

One of our roles as OT is to help clients to identify architectural barriers that interferes with their recovery by adapting the physical environment for increased accessibility. We also address the physical, cognitive and sensory components of occupational performance to determine what kind of structure and environmental cues are needed to engage the client in task completion. With the clients of A Bridge to Growth, we will pay special attention to the influence of the larger sociocultural context and political economic factors, on the occupational engagement. We will treat our clients in the least restrictive environment, with the optimum balance of individual freedoms and supervision for them to function.

Culturally competent

The strategies that we will use to provide services culturally competent are the acquisition of knowledge and skills to understand different cultural values and viewpoints and integrate these into therapeutic interventions to create a meaningful occupational therapy experience. We will create interventions that can acknowledge, honor, and address the complex cultural backgrounds of our clients. Clients’ occupations and approaches to activities of daily living, work habits, hobbies, and recreation, as well as the practice of rituals will be individually tailored to the client or client group taking in consideration their cultural background.

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Contribution of the developments in the history and philosophy of occupational therapy in the 1990s to the contemporary focus of OT for clients in Recovery programs.

During the final two decades of the twentieth century the occupational therapy psychosocial practice had many significant changes that lead to the actual recovery programs used in many clinics today(Schwartz,2013). For example, Kielhofner introduced A Model of Human Occupation (MOHO) (1985, 1995). This model was designed to be used with all client populations but provides a particularly strong model for psychosocial practice in its focus on occupation, habits and routines, and motivation. In addition, several assessments based on MOHO were developed such as the Occupational Performance History Interview (OPHI). Another valuable theoretical approach was created by Dunn, Brown, and McGuigan (1994), who proposed the Ecology of Human Performance framework to provide a structure for thinking about context as a key variable in assessment and intervention planning. These approaches focused on occupation, context, and client-centered practice reflect what became the major tenets of the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework (OTPF), published by the AOTA in 2002 and revised in 2008(Schwartz,2013).

Another contribution was from Schindler (1988), who explored the role of psychosocial occupational therapy in helping people cope with AIDS, a relatively new phenomenon at that time(Schwartz,2013). Sholle-Martin and Alessi (1990) defined child psychiatry as an emerging area of practice for psychosocial practitioners and they proposed an approach based on MOHO, which they suggested could provide practitioners with a way to assess the child’s volitional, habituation, performance, and environmental dimensions. Fike (1990), in a special issue on multiple personality disorder proposed that “Occupational therapy can serve as a stabilizing force for patients with multiple personality disorder” by providing developmental play, role management, daily living skills training, and prevocational support. Nahmias and Froehlich (1993) argued for the importance of addressing women’s mental health issues. Dillard et al. (1992) identified the importance of cultural competence in psychosocial practice, and proposed an innovative multicultural model consisting of special focus programs(Schwartz,2013). .

In conclusion, this period marked the beginning of a return to occupation for the profession, both in concept and terminology. Now, after almost a century, the profession returned to using the term occupation, which was first coined by the founders in 1917 and communicate with other professionals, and conceptualize their assessments and interventions (Schwartz,2013).