OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

Telehealth

The internet has become a tool for occupational therapists to use to provide access to occupational therapy for a variety of different patient populat...

3 July 2020

Who Benefits From Telehealth Occupational Therapy? People who may have experienced injuries such as a stroke, a brain injury, feeding disorders, uppe...

15 May 2020

TBI

Dr. Amen discusses the importance of brain scans in medical practice. Many clinical providers do not get a chance to look at their client’s brains, ...

2 October 2020

This will be the best, most informative 35 minutes of your day. Concussions are more frequent than many people realize. Kyra's 25 years working with T...

16 September 2020

Occupational therapists are on the front lines working with brain injury. Difficulties OTs face with patients with brain injury include not only the p...

21 August 2020

Social media offers an opportunity for people to connect with one another. On Facebook, people can find ‘groups’ devoted to special interests, cau...

14 August 2020

While exercising regularly promotes physical health, exercising may also provide cognitive benefits. Specifically, attention has been drawn to the pot...

12 August 2020

Professional athletes and everyday people are susceptible to brain injury. What is important for both patients with brain injury and clinical provider...

10 August 2020

While smartphones get a bad reputation from being disruptive in many situations, smartphones can prove to be useful assistive devices for people with ...

15 June 2020

If you search on the internet, you can find a wealth of information regarding the use and effectiveness of telepractice for a variety of medical condi...

12 June 2020

Concussions impact all aspects of a child’s life. Kyra’s background in neurotrauma has set her apart in her field. Kyra explains how and why she ...

10 June 2020

Many people living with brain injury ask “will anyone date me after I have had a brain injury”? The answer is yes. While dating with brain injury ...

5 June 2020

Brain-injury causes not only cognitive and physical disturbance, but emotional. Many patients suffer from depression, with a report of approximately 4...

25 July 2019

Social Cognition

One of the greatest challenges in cognitive rehabilitation therapy is helping your client connect their practice of cognitive skills to their daily li...

25 September 2020

In 1996, Vialet launched Playworks with two schools in Berkeley, California. Currently, the organization brings play and physical activities to childr...

7 September 2020

Let’s face it, making friends can be super challenging for children and adults. When a person has cognitive impairment, connecting with others can f...

13 July 2020

Gregg's insight into how social goals and cognitive functioning are related is valuable to understanding the importance of social cognition within cog...

6 July 2020

Through television shows, memes, tweets and conversation, people are finding ways to make others laugh. With witty puns and tactful punchlines, people...

13 December 2019

New Articles

Yes, you can! This blog post will tell you why. Telehealth and remote therapy options are becoming increasingly popular as the COVID-19 crisis continues. Seniors are among the most vulnerable people that could face fatal consequences of contracting the virus. Telehealth has been shown to be effective in managing chronic health conditions for elderly people while keeping them out of harm’s way. In this blog post, we show the research supporting and explaining how telehealth can be used to effectively manage chronic health conditions in elderly people.

23 November 2020

Occupational therapists are instrumental in the care of people living with dementia.Occupational therapists have a holistic understanding of how cognitive functioning impacts activities of daily living. They can provide cognitive stimulation therapy to help maintain areas of cognition and delay the gradual cognitive decline that occurs with dementia. Because there is no cure for dementia, the success of occupational therapy interventions, including cognitive stimulation therapy, is measured by the maintenance of certain cognitive functions that are expected to decline over time.

11 November 2020

‘Lego Therapy’ uses Legos to provide cognitive and emotional stimulation for people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Using Legos, she carves out roles for each of her clients to fulfill: manager, supplier, and builder. Using these roles, Kitty teaches her clients cognitive skills such as verbal fluency, attention, executive functioning, and visual spatial skills.

3 September 2020

Many people that experience a stroke, brain injury, or episode of psychosis have resulting cognitive complications. Many clients who have had a neurological accident or a psychotic episode can become unemployed and have trouble re-entering the workforce. Different kinds of clinicians can help their clients get back to work by providing cognitive remediation therapy and vocational support. In this blog post, we discuss how clinicians can help their clients get back to work by using cognitive remediation therapy

17 August 2020

Administrating and supplying occupational therapy services within a school system is challenging. There are a lot of barriers to overcome that inhibit children from receiving proper care. With the advancement of technology, more and more children are accessing occupational therapy through alternative methods.  While students with individualized education plans need to be able to access therapy, many schools have trouble finding an occupational therapist to do so (Muller, 2009). By using telepractice methods, occupational therapists can provide school systems access to specialized occupational therapy regardless of their location. 

15 July 2020

Did you know that damage to a person’s left hemisphere can change how they make coffee? Damage to the left hemisphere can cause a person to forget how to use a coffee machine, or even pick up a coffee cup. This cognitive problem is called apraxia. Apraxia is a cognitive disorder that interferes with the performance of everyday actions. People that have had a stroke, brain injury, or that develop dementia may develop apraxia which will impair naturalistic actions. Naturalistic actions are behaviors that require the use of an object to be accomplished (i.e. using a comb to brush one’s hair). Studies examining whether executive function or semantic knowledge plays a larger role in apraxia have been completed with different patient populations showing contrasting results6.

1 July 2020

Who Benefits From Telehealth Occupational Therapy? People who may have experienced injuries such as a stroke, a brain injury, feeding disorders, upper extremity limb loss, and other neurological conditions have seen positive results from telehealth.  Literature suggests that telehealth interventions are proven to be more effective than traditional in-person therapy sessions for mental health and substance abuse populations (Kinley et al., 2012).   Lastly, telehealth services have shown efficacy for adults with autism living in assisted living facilities to be able to perform household activities more independently (Taber-Doughty, Shurr, Brewer, and Kubik, 2010). 

15 May 2020