Occupational Therapy in the Media

Because occupational therapy is constantly growing and expanding, there has been much representation of the profession in the media in recent years. I came across an article in the New York Times that was released a few years back about the benefits of occupational therapy on children's fine motor skills. The article, "Sharp Rise in Occupational Therapy Cases at New York's Schools" by Elizabeth A. Harris paints a picture of what occupational therapy looks like, and how it can benefit the lives of many people. The article discusses the fact that using occupational therapy in schools has constantly been on the rise, stating that there has been a 30 % increase in the number of students referred to occupational therapists recently in New York's public schools alone. The author provides details about how occupational therapists can make a vast impact on a child's fine motor skills, such as helping them improve their handwriting, pencil grip, typing, etc. Something that stood out to me in this article was that the author recognized how taking different approaches to children's needs can greatly catch them up to speed and enhance their basic skills. In describing this, Harris gave a basic overview of occupational therapy, describing how OTs work with clients on tasks that occupy their everyday lives. Including this brief definition of occupational therapy is beneficial for readers, as there is still much confusion to the public over what OT is. I thought that this article accurately represented what occupational therapy is all about, through the use of examples of the impact it made on students. I enjoyed that there were before and after pictures of children's handwriting to see the difference occupational therapy had on their writing skills - the improvement was vast! It is exciting for me to see a shift happening in the world to where people are taking more creative approaches to tackle different situations. The fact that a child's motor skills can improve so much with an OT helping them find new ways to approach tasks is incredibly inspiring, and I cannot wait to see how the profession continues to grow in the coming years!

Here is the link to the article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/nyregion/new-york-city-schools-see-a-sharp-increase-in-occupational-therapy-cases.html