Hello. My name is Katie, and I am a licensed Occupational Therapist working in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.
What is an Occupational Therapist (OT)? I have been asked this question many times and I never have the same answer. I am always changing my description, mostly because what an OT does is forever changing. In a nutshell, an occupational therapist helps individuals overcome any deficit they may have (or acquired) in order to live independently with a high quality of life.
If someone is familiar with what an occupational therapist does, he or she is typically familiar with our role in a physical disabilities setting. In that sense, we work in a hospital or outpatient clinic to rehabilitate people who have physical limitations. Often this is alongside a physical therapist. But OTs also work with individuals with cognitive deficits or mental health diagnoses. In fact, the occupational therapy profession originated in the early 1900s, during WWI, as a mental health profession.
On the front lines of WWI, American commanding officers were noticing strange behavior and strange, over exaggerated reactions from soldiers who had just seen combat. They attributed this behavior to Shell Shock (now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD). Symptoms included hyper vigilance and sensitivity to loud sounds, paranoia, anxiety attacks, increased outbreaks of anger, and heightened emotions. Symptoms typically got severe enough that soldiers could no longer function effectively in combat. Instead of taking these soldiers off the front lines, the US government brought help to them in the form of Reconstruction Aids (or early occupational therapists). These reconstruction aids were tasked with the job of helping soldiers cope with symptoms and find ways to get back to doing their jobs of fighting the enemy. By using creative interventions, the early occupational therapists worked with soldiers to redefine threatening objects and/or sounds to associate them with innocuous things; debris from bombs were used as flower pots, and shell casings were glued together to make designs in paintings. This was an early form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). An approach that helped patients change the way they think, and thus allow them to react in a productive way to something that in the past threatened their wellbeing.
Today, occupational therapists use CBT to help individuals diagnosed with PTSD return to their every day life. OTs teach individuals to recognize symptoms, cope with the symptoms on a daily basis, and return to a productive daily life while taking on a number of different roles (a member of a family, a friend, an employee and a member of society).
I was personally involved in working with veterans long I became an occupational therapist. In Middle School and High School I studied the US involvement in both the Vietnam War and WWII. In college, that interest grew to be more of an interest in the soldiers themselves, rather than the politics. I spent 4 years interviewing veterans and sharing their experiences through short 3-minute digital movies. It was during that time that I discovered the power of storytelling and that healing can happen just by sharing experiences. As an occupational therapist, I have used a form of storytelling in many of my treatments, but I have always come back to the DOD and VA populations. I have worked for the VA hospital system and I have done contract work for the DOD. I have an incredible respect for what our service men and women do, and I want to give back to this incredible population. I truly believe that it is time for the rest of us to give back to those who have already given so much. I recognize that coming home is not always seamless, and that there are challenges returning active duty members face that are not always understood by the general public. I am hoping that by educating veterans and their families about the type of services out there, including occupational therapy, and the support systems available to them, that I can help returning soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines reintegrate into a daily routine back here at home.
