Occupational Therapy Blog

Your friendly neighbourhood awkward therapist.

[otstudent]

Hey, I'm applying to OT programs and have always been interested in mental health (I have a bachelors in psychology). I've also heard that mental health jobs are very rare in OT and I saw that you work in that field. Do you have any advice for finding a job in the mental health field?

hi! i think it depends heavily on where you live. I’m Canadian and I think OTs are pretty established here both in community mental health and hospital based mental health. 

i would say that if you are certain you want to work in mental health, start volunteering now if you can (e.g. I volunteered at a women’s drop in centre, serving meals. it gave me a great resume /skills/experience when applying for community mental health work in homelessness), or look for jobs like residential support worker at a mental health support home (e.g. jobs where OTs COULD work, but often dont due to funding - will give you a great sense of what the field is like) and finally, my job prospects panned out pretty well for me, but when I was applying i was applying to OT jobs AND mental health jobs, not just OT in mental health jobs. A foot in the door is a foot in the door. :)

Let me know if you have follow up questions :)

[otstudent]

From a curious outsider, what is your work week like? Do you work 80+ hours each week? I was told at one point that most OT's work close to 100 hours each week and I thought that was interesting since it is similar to the hours an accounting or other firm job would have. As a member of society who also works long hours, I feel as though I have no purpose in life other than working, which just feeds into my long-standing depression, but for me that's how I see life. Mainly unenjoyable :/

I hear you.

This is not an OT thing. It’s a capitalism thing.

Any industry is prone to working long hours and I wish I could say stuff like: self-care, set boundaries, do you! but I know that that is not realistic for a lot of people who do work those long hours because like…how you gonna eat?

I’ll speak to healthcare though: there is the tendency to stay late to help. we all go into these professions to help, so even when we complain about being underpaid, unless you really really burnt out, you’re still providing excellent care despite the lack of reward and resourcing.

Personally, I chose to work in community settings where I have more control over my day, but less pay than those working in hospital. So while there might be some weeks where I’d push close to 80 a week, its pretty rare. Boundaries on my work day are VERY important to me, like if you’re paying me for 40 hours, you will get 40 hours of work out of me. This often was to my detriment because work would just pile up…. lol soooo it probably is true that many OTs work long hours. Maybe not 80-100hours a week, but easily 50-60 on an average week.

The last thing I’ll comment on is how this feeds into your depression. I hear you. A lot of mental health recovery advocates speak about how a lot of “mental health systems” would probably magically disappear if we lived in a more communal, community based society, without all the pressure to produce and be productive all the damn time. Part of what we learn in OT school is the importance of MEANINGFUL activity, not just activity. And for soooooo many of us, the jobs that sustain us are not actually meaningful…or, the only meaning in them is that they pay our bills. We often have to look outside of our “productivity” goals to really establish what is meaningful to us. When you find it? Don’t give it up.

Part of my new life journey right now is to sort of OT myself and figure out how to get paid for what is meaningful to me. But I have a lot of privilege to be able to do that (my partner is financially supporting me for a few months while I figure stuff out…)

[otstudent]

hey there! i'm wondering if you know of any resources for me and my girlfriend (we're both gay). we've been talking about sex but (obviously) want to discuss and plan before actually doing it. she has CP and communicates through AAC and we've been struggling to find resources... one of the things we could really use information on is positioning, considering that she uses a wheelchair (and i don't). do you have any thoughts or resources?? thanks!!!

This is a great question & lovely question.  I am SO SORRY I am only getting to it now.

First, disclaimer: because I work in mental health, I haven’t thought about sex and disability for a long time, but it is something that interested me when I was in OT school. Unfortunately, a lot of the resources I knew off the top of my head are already defunct … so all I’ve got now is to point you to http://www.andrewgurza.com/ - they have a product line & a podcast about sex and disability …He’s also gay so I think you’ll hopefully find some things on there that will help!

Generally speaking (this is NOT professional advice), I think the communication piece is going to be key for you, as it is in any sexual relationship. As it may take time to sort of trial and error the most comfortable physical positions, consider ways your partner might be able to communicate with you in the moment, if the AAC device is not feasible to use during sex - eg. hand signals, holding an object and dropping it etc. If you’re both comfortable with self-stimulation, that might be a easy way to ease into sex as well - talk about what works for you when you’re alone and see how you can make that work for partnered sex.

Finally, I’d love to hear from any other readers if they have other resources or suggestions! :)

[otstudent]

Hey! It's a long time away (in like 2 years lol) and I'm studying in NZ (I'm not sure where you are studying) and I'm really interested in OT. How is your experience going so far and how are you finding it. I want to find out a lot of information before I decide this is what I'm going to do in case I want to study something else haha!

Hey, maybe 2 years have passed since you asked this. I hope you’re on the OT track, but even if not, hope you’re doing good in general :)

I just realized I did a fairly good job of tagging old questions

https://otstudent.tumblr.com/tagged/question

I LOVED OT school. I felt like I found myself and my people when I graduated OT school.

7 years later, I don’t have those same feelings, I feel like I am again learning and figuring out where I belong in this world…but I don’t blame OT for that. Just sharing where I’m at, honestly.

[otstudent]

Hi! I'm a student in OT from Quebec, and I'm graduating in a few months. Since I will be applying for jobs soon, I was thinking of working in Ontario. However, I'm a little worried about working in a setting I am not familiar with and/or different from the placements I've had. Could you describe briefly how the health system works, and job opportunities for OTs in Ontario? Thank you!!

Another probably old question... but since I have only worked in Ontario, I can’t really compare and contrast differences with other provinces but I’ll do my best to give a quick overview.

In Canada, generally speaking, the federal government gives each province money to manage healthcare in their province. In Ontario, it is the ministry of health and social services that does this. The government offloads decision making about spending to local governing bodies. They used to be called LHINs or Local Health Integrated Networks, but are now changing to OHT or Ontario Health Teams. In general, these are largely the same in terms of the kind of decision making power they hold, but the OHTs are more directly controlled by specific hospitals, instead of the LHINs which were sort of a separate third party. We’re in the middle of transitioning between LHINs and OHTs but for the frontline worker ,that’s not really gonna matter that much.

OTs work pretty much everywhere in Ontario. Acute care, rehab, long term care (but often via third party and not direct -- our LTC situation is really dire, check any recent news article for more), community mental health, acute mental health, homecare.... I mean, try to think of an area where OTs arent working and you’re not gonna come up with a very long list. We have OTs in some of our prisons, working with vets, in homeless shelters, hospitals... you name it. A lot of OT jobs are not unionized, unless you are with a hospital that has a union.

To practice as an OT in ontario you must register with the College of Occupational Therapists in Ontario. There is also OSOT - the ontario society of OTs - which is the provincial version of CAOT.

Hope that helps!

[otstudent]

Hey there! I'm about to start Occupational Therapy school and am pretty nervous about it. A lot of self doubt is creeping in and I'm starting to question if I will be able to handle the curriculum. Any advice?? Thanks :)

Another one from the vaults…

1. Self doubt / imposter syndrome can happen to anyone. I personally never experienced it until recently, but its a thing that can happen to anyone at any point in their career. I blame capitalism and the ingrained desire to always perform and be productive and be perfect. You got into the program, which is the first major hurdle. You can do this.

2. Put in the work but also play it smart. There will be parts of the curriculum you LOVE and will learn because you enjoy it. There will be other parts you hate, that you will do just to get the graduating grade. If you can figure out the difference early on, that will help you sooo much as so much of grad school, and life, is prioritizing your time. If you’re not sure what it is you’re passionate about yet, that’s ok too! The key here is to be smart with your time. My class split up all the class readings across the class; instead of reading 40 papers, I read 3 and created a 1 page summary sheet, and then also read everyone elses one page summary. I don’t know what actual professors would say about this strategy, but it worked well for our cohort!

3. Don’t be afraid to ask for help!!! When I teach about diversity in the field, I always remind students there is diversity in the classroom!! Not just the usual like race/gender/sexual orientation diversity markers, but also psychologists, kinesologists, political scientists, biologists….etc. I partnered with a kin major to study for anatomy courses. She taught me all I know, and by teaching me, reinforced her own learning. Win - win.

Ya’ll got this.

[otstudent]

I want to be an occupational therapist and I am an undergrad. How intense is the OT master program? How is it to get accepted into it?

Hi!

Tumblr doesn’t say when messages were sent, so this could be from anytime between 2017 and 2020... Sorry for the delay. But let’s get into the question!

The OT master program is fairly “intense”, but I would say, no more intense than other graduate level programs. Every single program has slightly different standards for entry, so your best bet is to contact the schools you are interested in to inquire. You can kind of gauge based on the application process how difficult it is - eg. some schools require anatomy pre-requisites, others do not. Some schools request personal essays, others do not. They’ll also tell you the minimum GPA you need to get in.

Most schools also have a student liaison. If you can get in touch with them, that might be a great resource as well. I do some mentorship for prospective students through the school I’m affiliated with, so it is well worth reaching out to the specific school you’re keen on to inquire for resources and to ask like “Ok, the stated minimum is xyz GPA, but what is really the average GPA for acceptance?”

I will say, now as someone who is nearly a decade into practice (omg), my understanding is that it is more and more competitive - growing alongside the competitiveness for graduate level schooling IN GENERAL. The University I am affiliated with (i’m in a major canadian city) opened up more seats in the program, which maybe helped loosen the competition for grad school, but then you have to think about job market competition too. In addition, OT clinicians are now competing more with researchers/scientists for seats in the program. Anecdotally, it is becoming more and more popular for this program to act as the “stepping stone” to medicine, research pHD’s, or clinical psychology. Usually there are 1-2 with those tracks in mind in every cohort, but that is steadily increasing (just ancedote, no data to back it up at this point). 

[otstudent]

Hello again. Your answer to my question has been really helpful. Thank you for the reblog :)

Hey! I have NO clue when this message was from - prob years ago. not sure if you’re still active either or if you even remember what this is in reference to but hi, and you’re welcome ;) Hope you’re keeping well in this wild year.

[otstudent]

2021

Hey there!

I started this blog in 2011 when I started OT school. It was actually for a critical reflexivity assignment...and it totally took off and had a life of its own. I graduated OT school in 2013 and, I guess according to my post history,  stopped posting in 2017. If you’re new to this page, my career is focused on homelessness & mental health. 

I recently revisited this blog, just to see what’s up and I noticed I’ve missed a lot of questions from folks, and have had a bunch of new followers. For a while, I was getting a lot of messages about bitcoins lol so I thought maybe it was all spam, but it seems like there have been questions from prospective students and also some questions from people who are looking for OT services. 

I’m “back” this year, as I am actually taking a 1 year break from the workforce to go back to school ... perhaps unsurprisingly based on my bloggin’, I am studying journalism! I’m not sure exactly how I plan to revive this blog, or if I really fully will, but I’d like to commit to answering questions from followers, and I will go back through my messages and respond to each one. Even if the original asker may never see, perhaps someone else out in the internet void will appreciate the answer. This also means: feel free to submit more questions!

What you’ve missed since 2017 (and probably what corresponded to stopping blogging) is that I changed roles from frontline OT to a role working in a role in “health equity”, which involves more program planning, advocacy, research and teaching work. I remain involved as an adjunct lecturer within the OT school I went to, and have been pushing conversations about equity within our profession.

I may not be a student OT anymore, but will always be a student of life and humanity.

Thanks for sticking around.

[butterflyinthewell]

Do you think parents putting autistic children in occupational therapy is wrong?

Any therapy that doesn’t aim to extinguish stimming or force an autistic child into something they aren’t is okay. 

Any therapy that helps with speech, but doesn’t make speech the end communication goal and offers alternatives(AAC, picture boards, sign language, etc) to help a child communicate in a more understandable way is okay. 

Any therapy to help improve motor skills is good and doesn’t aim to cover up autism symptoms and behaviors is okay.

Any therapy to help a child manage their sensory issues as best as they can is okay. 

Any therapy to help a child understand social situations without teaching them that they’re broken for not inherently knowing those things is okay.

Any therapy that teaches a child how to advocate for themselves and respects their “no” is okay.

Any therapy that moves at the child’s pace and respects their agency, autonomy and dignity is great.

It’s possible to help an autistic child branch out without forcing them to look neurotypical.

[kristen-reads-blog]

Everything that OT’s really do! 

[kristen-reads-blog]

Where do Occupational Therapists Work?

OT’s take on a lot of roles. Check it out! 

Child and Adolescent Mental Health

Adult Mental Health

Old Age Psychiatry

Alcohol and Addiction Services

Neurology

Stroke Rehabilitation

Brain Injury Rehabilitation

Hand Therapy and Rehabilitation

Older Persons Healthcare

Pediatric Healthcare and Rehabilitation

Intellectual Disability

Palliative Care and Oncology

Orthopaedics

Musculoskeletal Disorder

Rheumatology

Pain Management

Housing Adaptations

Specialist seating

Ergonomics

Vocational Rehabilitation

Acute Hospital Healthcare

Nursing Home and Residential Care

Primary and Community Care

Private Healthcare

Schools and Universities

Healthcare Management

[kristen-reads-blog]

OT: Yes or No

No, I am not just like a PT

No, I will not find you a job

No, I will not force you to become “normal”

Yes, I will help you find a way to do what matters to you (no matter what condition/diagnosis/limitation stands in your way)

Yes, I will embrace your unique qualities and differences

Yes, I will work with people that have both physical and mental illness on aspects of every day life (such as dressing, bathing, driving, cooking, community outings, regulating sensory input, school, work, social skills……. the list goes on)

Yes, I will always make your goals a priority

[justgetthroughtheyear]

all of the shoulder muscles are complete!

[paintyourescape]

E.M. Lydiatt was a trained occupational therapist who had been deeply influenced by Jungian theory. She was described by a friend as being “short and stout, with thick wiry hair and intense eyes (…) [she was] excitable, fervent, and brimming with enthusiasm.” 

Lydiatt was a pioneer of art therapy during the 1950s, founding art departments at Fulbourne Hospital, Runwell Hospital, Leavesdon Hospital, St. Marylebone Hospital, and a private clinic called Bowden House. During her art therapy sessions, patients were given the opportunity to talk about their pictures and sculptures, but were not pressured to do so. Lydiatt worked with fairly small groups, and was passionate about making the atmosphere of her sessions as comfortable and relaxing as possible. In one hospital, the patients were allowed to paint directly onto the walls.

In her influential book, Spontaneous Painting and Modelling: A Practical Approach to Therapy (1971), she emphasised her reluctance to interpret the artwork of her clients, believing that many symbols were impossible to translate into words, and that an atmosphere of “analysis” during an art therapy session could severely limit the self-expression of a client and prevent him or her from fully engaging with the activities. She wrote: “…it is terrifyingly easy to project one’s own problems onto patients and to add to their burdens and bewilderment.“

Lydiatt’s main beliefs were that:

During a productive session of spontaneous painting, the conscious mind becomes linked to the unconscious mind without being overwhelmed by it.

As spontaneous creation is a very stimulating process, it should ideally be balanced with a simple, calm activity like going for a walk afterwards.

The role of the art therapist is simply to create an environment in which a process of “active imagination” can take place.

Creation is health-giving and restoring.

[cjm-otstudies]

More note revisions and review as tomorrow’s exam quickly approaches 👏🏻

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

Be nice to yourself. It’s hard to be happy when someone is being mean to you all the time.

Christine Arylo (via onlinecounsellingcollege)