Monday 31 October 2011

The role of OT with people with Eating Disorders

Hey :)

It's been a while since I updated this, I've been mad busy over the last few weeks. It's my own fault, I need to learn to say no to opportunties (!).

Anyway, since it's been a while I thought I'd start with a (relatively) easy post. A few weeks ago I went to a SHOUT event. SHOUT is a student led regional BAOT group and I would highly recommend checking them out on twitter and facebook! This month's event was entitled "The role of Occupational Therapy with People with Eating Disorders". I will confess that I had never shown any particular interest in ED before, but I was pleasantly surprised at how engaged I got in discussions.

One thing that I never knew before the event was that ED are classed as a Mental Health Condition. I knew about the background of mental health disorders to ED, resulting in the need for control, but had not thought about how they were classified. This put ED in a very different light for me. I have always maintained that I am more of a mental health OT, and suddenly ED was on my radar.

Whilst my local area has very good service provisions for those suffering from ED, there is still a lack of OT input into their therapeutic programmes and deliveries. One of the speakers had spent a role emerging placement with the ED team and she presented her experience. Many of the situations she came across and the methods used to deal with these were "bread and butter OT". There was nothing spectacularly different about helping people with ED. The emphasis was simply put on being there for them, listening to them and supporting them to change their life. Surely this sums up all OT interventions?

The talk certainly challenged many of my ideas and preconceptions about ED, both from a personal and professional level. It made me realise that our inherent OT skills ARE transferable and they should be used in so many more situations. It does not take a team of researchers to realise there is a role for OT, nor does it take an academic to implement changes. These are grass roots plans that can be put into action by any qualified or student OT.

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