Contemporary Issues in Occupational Therapy
Reasoning and Reflection
Chapter One
The thinking
therapist
Jennifer Creek
Introduction
The practice of occupational therapy had its beginnings in the wards of long-stay
psychiatric institutions, with the first occupational therapists providing systematic
programmes of purposeful activity for people who were excluded from society
and confined. Many of these institutions contained as many as 2000 or more
inmates and they were built on the outskirts of towns (Paterson, 2002), providing
a visible indication of the marginalised status of the inmates.
Occupational therapists working in these institutions used interesting,
soothing and pleasurable activities to occupy the time and hold the interest of
patients: 'a program of wholesome living as the basis of wholesome feeling
and thinking and fa ... read full excerpt from Contemporary Issues in Occupational Therapy: Reasoning and Reflection ebook
