What is OT?
Occupational Therapy, abbreviated as “OT”, is a holistic practice that uses meaningful activity to help people with limitations or impairments participate in everyday life.
Holistic
Occupational Therapists work with individuals, families, and groups to improve health and well-being through therapeutic use of everyday activities.
Comprehensive
OTs provide evaluation, treatment, and consultation. OT relies on analyzing the physical, cognitive, and social components of an activity and then adapting the activity, the environment, or the client's skills to enable participation.
Client-Centered
Occupational therapists work with people across the life span. The core of occupational therapy is understanding the importance of an activity to an individual.
OT focuses on what matters most to you.
Play, work, leisure (fun!), education, rest and sleep, activities of daily living (the everyday mundane stuff that really matters!), social participation, and health management - this is the stuff of life - and… the stuff you can work on in occupational therapy!
To make that more tangible, an OT may help children with special needs participate fully in school, community, and family environments; help people recovering from injury to regain skills; or provide support for older adults experiencing physical and cognitive changes.
Motor interventions performed by OTs have been shown to result in significant changes in children’s motor performance, according to a systematic review published in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy in 2013.