Occupational Therapy for Adult Mental Health

Occupational therapy is a client-centred health profession concerned with promoting health and well-being through occupation. The primary goal of occupational therapy is to enable people to participate in the activities of everyday life. Occupational therapists achieve this outcome by working with people and communities to enhance their ability to engage in the occupations they want to, need to, or are expected to do, or by modifying the occupation or the environment to better support their occupational engagement. (RCOT 2021)

Our services are provided to adults aged 18-65 to enable people to facilitate their own recovery and wellbeing, managing any barriers that prevent them from doing the activities (occupations) that matter to them. This helps to increase people's independence and satisfaction in all aspects of their life. An occupational therapist gets to know patients and carers/families to find out about and support them with the following:

• Volition: motivation to do things that are interesting and valuable to them. Their confidence in their own abilities, experiences and their hopes for the future.
• Roles: the day to day roles and responsibilities the service user has and their relationships with the people around them.
• Routines: what service users do on a daily or weekly basis. How their time is organised and whether they have a balance between self-care, productivity and leisure.
• Performance capacity: the abilities and skills that the service user needs every day to concentrate and organise tasks; physically manage what they need to do and also to interact with others. 
• Physical and social environments: the place where the service user lives and the places they go to, as well as who they spend time with and the resources, they have to support them. 

These areas are important as they are linked to self-care, productivity, working towards an individual’s goals, leisure and having a satisfying routine.