Adult Occupational Services
Adult occupational therapy focuses on assisting individuals in living independent, creative, and satisfying lives through developing, recovering, improving, and maintaining the skills needed for daily living, functional independence, and working.
Areas of focus generally include:
- Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) – dressing, bathing, grooming, toileting, food preparation, self-feeding, and other tasks related to daily life or working.
- Functional Cognition – the thinking and processing skills needed to accomplish complex everyday activities such as household & financial management, medication management, chores, volunteer activities, driving, and work.
Occupational therapists create personalized intervention plans, to help develop the cognitive, motor, or self-care skills needed to increase independence and functionality in daily life.
Who benefits from OT? Occupational Therapy can be appropriate for adults of all ages, from all walks of life. Whether through regression of skills, injury, trauma, or increased age – treatment is always designed for the individual.
According to the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), adults with the following conditions may specifically benefit from Occupational Therapy:
- Human genetics and/or development – e.g., environmental deprivation, fetal alcohol syndrome, learning disabilities, pervasive developmental disorders.
- Neurologic disease, injuries, and disorders – e.g., stroke, traumatic brain injury [TBI], Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease and related major neurocognitive disorders [dementias], rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, lupus, Lyme disease, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiac and circulatory conditions.
- Mental illness – e.g., schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, substance use disorders.
- Transient or continuing life stresses or changes – e.g., stress-related disorders, pain syndromes, anxiety disorders, grief and loss.
