Open AccessA Need to Activate Lasting Engagement
Author(s) -
Rachelle Brick,
Kathleen Doyle Lyons,
Juleen Rodakowski,
Elizabeth Skidmore
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the american journal of occupational therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.646
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1943-7676
pISSN - 0272-9490
DOI - 10.5014/ajot.2020.039339
Subject(s) - everyday life , psychological intervention , psychology , occupational therapy , bridge (graph theory) , behavioral activation , life skills , psychotherapist , applied psychology , medicine , cognition , pedagogy , psychiatry , political science , law
Occupational therapy practitioners provide interventions to promote activity engagement to multiple clinical populations. They help clients develop restorative, adaptive, and compensatory skills to improve their performance in daily activities. The issue addressed in this article is that current clinical frameworks lack translation of learned skills to consistent everyday performance. There is a gap between what clients can do and what clients actually do in everyday life. Behavioral activation provides an explicit, structured, and practical approach that can translate capacity into long-term engagement. This article presents behavioral activation as a transdiagnostic approach that targets populations experiencing chronic illness to bridge the gap between what the client can do in therapy and what the client could do in everyday life.