How Do Mental Health Disorders Impact Work And Leisure? How Can Occupational Therapy Help?

“An idle brain is the devil’s workshop.” We are all aware of this idiom! Aren’t we? Why do you think it is important to engage our mind in something purposeful? How can you define a purposeful activity? Is your daily routine purposeful? Does your mental health have any effect on your daily routine? What impact does it have on your work and daily routine? What can be done to not let disturbed mental health have an impact on work and leisure activities?

Let us seek answers to the above questions!

What you need to know:

• How do mental health issues impact work and leisure activities?
• Occupational therapy intervention
• Case studies on intervention to the impact of mental health issues

Purposeful activity is any task in your daily routine which is meaningful to you. It can be a reason you wake up to a new day, your passion for work or a new-found hobby, or the pursuit of leisure activity.

Work and leisure activities are a major part of your daily routine which indeed are purposeful. Work can be a person working as a professional working from 9-5 or even a housewife working for her home. Work need not always be monetary but needs to be purposeful and productive. It increases one’s self-esteem and self-respect. Leisure activities can be as simple as listening to music or going on weekend treks. Pursuing leisure activities improve the sense of self.

How do mental health issues impact work and leisure activities?

Mental health issues have a detrimental impact on your daily routine tasks. Mental health issues might make you feel worthless if you are not contributing to yourself and society. The purposeful activities in your life, work, and leisure activities might not give you the same meaning and satisfaction as it was before the onset of mental health issues. Hence it becomes crucial to get people back on track and help them carry on with purposeful work and leisure activities.

Occupational therapy intervention

An Occupational Therapist brings meaning to the functional activity. Before beginning what assessment and intervention are provided by an Occupational Therapist, let us take a look at the history of Occupational History.
As quoted in the article ‘A Brief History of Occupational Therapy’ by Michel Moninger, COTA/L – “World War I was a pivotal time for the development of occupational therapy. The U.S. military recognized the benefit of “reconstruction aides” providing OT services to those dealing with mental health and physical dysfunction challenges. During this and the subsequent second World War, a great push was made for occupational therapy services to be provided to wounded soldiers. It was during this time that a drastic shift was made from simply utilizing arts and crafts to using activities of daily living in the treatment of a variety of conditions. This push and advancement greatly served to solidify the value of occupational therapy on the world scene.”

As you just read, the crux of Occupational Therapy is to engage the client in a meaningful and purposeful activity. It is also important to note that the emergence of Occupational Therapy services was first in Mental Health patients.

Usually, when a patient approaches an Occupational Therapist whose work and leisure activities are impacted due to Mental Health, the Occupational Therapist tries to gather information subjectively about how the work and leisure activities going on before the onset of the illness and how is it impacted currently due to the Mental Health issues. Objective assessment tools like- the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM), Routine Task Inventory (RTI), and Model of Human Occupation Screening Tool Self-Assessment (MOHOST) can be useful in understanding the impact of Mental Health issues on work and leisure activities. Occupational Therapy intervention for adult mental health patients is holistic and uses remedial and compensatory approaches. The remedial approach addresses the weakness and makes a possible and desired improvement in addressing the concerns. The compensatory approach addresses the strengths and uses them to make it functional for the client to carry out daily activities.

Case studies on intervention to the impact of mental health issues

Mpower- The Foundation, Mumbai, caters to clients with Mental Health issues. The foundation has a multidisciplinary team of professionals. The Occupational Therapist at Mpower Foundation provides services to child psychiatry cases and adult clients with Mental Health issues. Following are a few related case studies which address intervention to the impact of mental health disorders on work and leisure activities:

Case 1:

A client diagnosed with ADHD working in the Sales department finds it difficult to prioritize the tasks and update the daily data. The client also finds it difficult to attend meetings and comprehend them at the end of the session. The therapist worked on visual and auditory attention and memory skills. Also, as compensatory strategies, the therapist suggested he make a vision board, prioritize and write down the tasks on sticky notes, and put it on the board. It would be a visual reminder for the client, and once the work gets done, he can remove the sticky notes, which would give him feedback. Understanding his job profile and difficulty, the therapist formulated an excel sheet which he can use to segregate the information so that it becomes easy for him to update the daily report at the end of the day.

Case 2:

A client diagnosed with dementia comes with his caregiver concerned that he is irritable and sleepy all day. He is currently on work leave. Since he had always been a workaholic, this sudden shift change is very distressful, and the lack of leisure activities adds to the distress. The therapist is providing cognitive-perceptual remediation. She first addressed formulating a structured schedule in collaboration with the client and caregiver to include physical activity, leisure activity, and shared activity with the spouse, and a slot kept exclusively for family time. A therapist has also tried exploring and introducing new leisure activities like cooking, gardening, and listening to audiobooks.

Along with the cognitive-perceptual remediation, the therapist also tried continuing his leisure activity of reading newspapers and solving Sudoku puzzles. Earlier, he used to solve an advanced-level puzzle, and now he can solve an easy-level puzzle. The best therapeutic goal, in this case, is he feels happy pursuing his old leisure activity even with the present illness!

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This article was published on Mpowerminds.com.