Occupational therapy is a discipline that aims at occupational instrumentation for the treatment of human health. The occupational therapist works for biopsychosocial well-being, helping the individual to have an active attitude towards her abilities and to modify her diminished abilities.
In other words, occupational therapy seeks to enable a person with physical or mental limitations to lead an independent life and value their own potential. Occupational therapy can help treat brain and spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy, general frailty, and post-fracture rehabilitation.
Specifically, among the areas in which this occupational therapy operates are also the socially marginalized, geriatrics, intellectual disability, mental health, drug addiction or community intervention. This discipline requires various activities to help the subject to adapt effectively to their physical and social environment. It should be noted that the occupation should not be understood as work or employment, but as all the tasks to which the patient is dedicated. These occupations vary with age: in occupational therapy for children, the relevant occupations will be playing and learning, for example. In this way, Occupational Therapy is responsible for the prevention, functional diagnosis, research and treatment of daily occupations in different areas, such as personal care (food, hygiene), recreation (games and recreational activities) and productivity (activities). school or work). The occupational therapist is responsible for implementing and developing the techniques, tools and actions that make up this type of therapy. A professional that has its origins in the eighteenth century. Specifically in the year 1793, the figure of a therapist of this modality is established for the first time and that is none other than the French psychiatrist Philippe Pinel, who at that time carried out a work that represented a true revolution in society. And it is that the aforementioned doctor, a specialist in mental illness, chose to break with the rules imposed until then. Thus, he abandoned the idea that patients with these pathologies should be chained or bled and opted to work with them through a more moral treatment, for therapeutic purposes. Finally, it can be pointed out that the occupational therapist must complete three stages in his training: the medical phase (related to basic medical sciences), the study of therapeutic activities for rehabilitation treatments and clinical practice.
A training that will be achieved by him through the various university degrees that can currently be found as part of the educational plans of many countries throughout the geography of the world. In this way, after several courses and disciplines, the occupational therapist will be perfectly trained to work with their patients based on their pathologies. Thus, taking this into account, treatments based, for example, on psychomotricity re-education techniques can be initiated.
