Mental Health in NC

I watched an interesting promotional video about evidenced based practice and the great programs that NC has for people with mental illnesses. It was easy to see how OT was being applied within these programs but the people implementing these programs were not in OT but in psychology, psychiatry, clinical social work, and public health. The programs sounded just like things we would do (goal setting/attaining, teaching parenting skills, educating on community supports, etc.). It just really brings home why we need to advocate for our profession since there is a great deal of overlap especially in mental health (click here for descriptions of professions in mental health). It's so difficult to tease out what makes OT different when we are all working on a person's mental health. If the mind is healthy, then occupational performance is improved which is easy to understand and then makes it easy to dismiss a need for OT. We have a hard road ahead of us to clarify how our focus on occupation affects changes in a unique way.