Occupational Therapy, Gender and Mental Health: An Inclusive Perspective?

Abstract

This article offers an understanding of how the gendered nature of occupational therapy has an impact on relationships between therapist and client, qualified staff and support workers, and occupational therapy managers and workers. It analyses the development of occupational therapy from its early, mainly female and middle-class, origins and explores how the profession has struggled to define its status and role to fit structures determined by the medical profession. The tensions that these pressures have exerted on occupational therapy's original concerns with domestic and creative activities are considered, drawing on feminist theories and sociological interpretations of gender and professional development in the context of mental health. It is argued that in trying to meet medicine's demand for a more scientific occupational therapy as well as orientate rehabilitation to returning clients to work, occupational therapists risk, first, losing sight of their core domestic activities and traditional caring roles and, secondly, devaluing the skills and abilities of their support worker colleagues. The article suggests that occupational therapists should claim domestic activities as central to practice and reconsider the feminine principles of caring, connectedness and the importance of relationships to produce a wholly inclusive and reflective practice.

Occupation and occupational therapy: Knowledge paradigms and everyday practice

“…An occupational therapist assists a patient to engage in occupations, in order to ultimately enhance occupational performance or efficiency, and to achieve health through doing. Other authors have also identified the difficulty of enacting occupation‐focused therapy within medically dominated health services (Baum, Berg, Seaton & White, 2002; Bryden & McColl, 2003; Crabtree, 1998a; Jongbloed & Wendland, 2002; Pollard & Walsh, 2000).…”

Use of Creative Activities in Occupational Therapy Practice in Sweden

“…Perrin () also discusses that occupational therapists are assessing rather than actually working with occupations as therapy and that the reduced use of creative activities as intervention in occupational therapy may be explained by a feeling of embarrassment about being connected with creative activities as such. Another possible explanation may be related to the following statement from Pollard and Walsh ():

Occupational therapy's relationship with medicine has been a one‐sided affair. This feminine profession, based in innovation and solutions to individual problems, in practical and domestic activities, has struggled to accommodate male demands for scientific rigour: thus medicine has still to recognize the value of its work” (p. 426).

In an editorial column, the frequent use of physical agent modalities (e.g.…”

“…Perrin (2001) also discusses that occupational therapists are assessing rather than actually working with occupations as therapy and that the reduced use of creative activities as intervention in occupational therapy may be explained by a feeling of embarrassment about being connected with creative activities as such. Another possible explanation may be related to the following statement from Pollard and Walsh (2000):…”

A Leadership Challenge for Occupational Therapy

“…The development of leadership skills has been identified as being particularly relevant for a predominantly female professional group, such as occupational therapy (Pollard and Walsh 2000). Acknowledging the existing gender inequalities in the health care system (Sebrant 1999), it could be asked: 'Are occupational therapists sufficiently aware of the impact of gender upon leadership and the use of power in order to ameliorate negative impact and actively promote a female advantage?…”