This text based course is a transcript of the live webinar titled, "Using the OT Practice Framework in Recovery-Based Mental Health: Guiding Communication & Treatment for Effective Outcomes", presented by Sean Getty, MS, OTR/L.
Introduction
We are going to talk about how to use the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework (OTPF) in mental health recovery. Our goal here is to look at the basic outline of the OTPF, especially if you are someone who graduated from school a while ago. I will give a brief review of that, and then how to apply the OTPF in mental health treatment. It is a very important concept and one that is often overshadowed in a lot of different treatment areas. It is imperative that we as OTs use this to justify our treatments and to allow for effective communication. Within the recovery-based framework for people with mental illness, it helps us explain the role of occupational therapy, what we are doing with certain clients, the techniques we use, and the things that might underlie this person's mental illness.
Ours goal for today are to identify how we can use the OTPF in assessing clients, identify how performance skill deficits align with cardinal symptoms of mental illness, and why that is such an important aspect of what we are doing. We will also identify how to utilize the OTPF in treatment planning so that we have functional outcomes, and how to measure these outcomes using the OTPF terminology. Also in doing all of these things, it will teach us how to more effectively communicate in terms of our treatment for people with severe, persistent mental illness.
Occupational Therapy Practice Framework
How many of you are familiar with the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework? Why the OTPF? The way that I explain the OTPF to students is if you were an electrician apprentice and you were learning how to do electrical work, they would give you a manual. You would have that manual beside you and refer to it consistently to make sure that you were doing the right thing. As an OT, the OTPF is our manual. It guides what we can and cannot do as a professional, and it also tells us how we should be assessing, treating, and measuring outcomes. When it comes to mental health, one of the issues that has been longstanding is how do we justify our treatments. The mental health spectrum is something that we had moved away from as we went towards a medical model, but now that we are taking a holistic approach again in mental health, it is imperative that OTs play a key role in this. The OTPF helps to justify our treatment in these recovery programs to other people who are working in the program. It guides what we are doing as a profession, and it helps us to understand how to effectively communicate, not only with other OTs, but also how to explain things to other treatment providers. It allows us to utilize our client-centered and occupation-based treatment in a way that we are helping someone to fully reach their recovery.
