Occupational Therapy

Abstract

Occupational Therapy first emerged with a separate identity from Medicine and Nursing as the “advancement of occupation as a therapeutic measure, the study of the effects of occupation upon the human being, and the dissemination of scientific knowledge of this subject” (American National Society for the Promotion of Occupational Therapy, 1917). It gained legal recognition in the UK as a profession supplementary to medicine in 1960 when granted state registered status along with seven other health care professions including physiotherapy. Despite such medically oriented classification, contemporary occupational therapy as practised in the 1990s has a largely humanistic and holistic, theoretical, philosophical base originally described by Mary Reilly in 1962 as a belief that the individual “through the use of his hands as they are energised by his mind and will, can influence the state of his own health” (Reilly, 1962 p2.) Thus, occupational therapists encourage a client’s ownership and management of his real world situation. Occupational therapists also believe that humans need to carry out occupations or, as Reilly (1969) describes it, engage in “occupational behaviour”. Viewed holistically, occupations are the activities engaged in to fill our lifetime, the classification we ascribe to them (work, leisure or self care), their meaning to us and their social significance and cultural meaning.