Mexican American Intergenerational Research: Transformative Model of Occupational Therapy.
Maritza Montiel Tafur, Yvonne de la Torre Montiel, Miguel Montiel
PMID 39015426WHAT IT FOUND
Stories from Mexican and Mexican American women described suffering, work, yearning for education, and compassion.
The authors use these themes to propose an occupational therapy model centered on play, social participation, sustainable work, education, and language.
Key findings
01Four themes emerged from the women's stories: suffering, work, yearning for an education, and compassion for others.
02The authors used the stories to identify play, social participation, work, and education as the occupations given the most priority in the women's lives.
03The authors propose Four Pillars of Culture: self-determination, compassion, sustainability, and language, derived from this research.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The stories are from 37 women selected by convenience, so they do not represent all Mexican Americans. The interviews were done in the 1970s with women born between 1881 and 1927, and the women had died before this paper, so follow-up questions were not possible. The data were translated from Spanish to English, and some nuances may have been lost. The paper reports little about LGBTQ+ representation or gender expression and sexual orientation. The second and third authors are the first author's parents and conducted the original interviews, which may shape interpretation. The model is a proposed theory, not a tested occupational therapy intervention.
Declared interests
No funding or conflict-of-interest declaration is given in the supplied text. The second and third authors are the first author's parents and collected the original interview data, which was previously published in a book.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that the Transformative Model of Occupational Therapy improves outcomes. It is a qualitative theory-building paper based on historical convenience interviews with 37 women, and the authors state the findings may not be generalized.