Mancuso Muse

I am an occupational therapist, which means that many people have no idea what I do for a living. This blog should serve as an excellent forum to promote and increase awareness of occupational therapy. Being such a broad profession means that even occupational therapists sometimes have difficulty explaining what it is that we do. One description is that we give people “skills for the job of living.” Regardless of how we describe what we do, it is one of the best professions out there (my humble opinion).

Often, when people hear “occupational therapy” they are misled into thinking that we help people with employment. Yes, we might help people with some aspects of employment, but we do much more. The word occupation in this context refers to anything that a person does that is meaningful to them. There are many things that are meaningful to us that we may take for granted, like being able to go to the bathroom independently, or getting into the car and driving to the grocery store.

So, occupational therapists help people to participate in meaningful occupations. We typically work with people who have some sort of disability, either from illness or injury. We also work with people of all ages. Some examples of what we might do include helping a premature infant to safely feed, finding a way for a child with cerebral palsy to fully participate in her day at school, or training an adult who had a stroke to use adaptive equipment in order to continue to live independently.