Physical Activity Interventions Within Occupational Therapy for Persons With Substance Use Disorder: A Systematic Review.

Most of the studies were not run by occupational therapy practitioners, so the reviewers say the profession's own role cannot be worked out from them. The studies differed in how they were designed and analysed, which the authors say reduces how strong the combined conclusions can be. Results are described study by study and grouped into themes rather than pooled, so the review does not say how large any benefit is or how confident we can be in the size of it. The final 28 studies were all rated Level 1 to 3, but the wider search included case studies, single-subject designs, observational cohorts and grey literature such as poster presentations, which is a wide range of quality underneath the headline grades. Only articles published in English were included, so relevant work in other languages is missing.

No funding source and no conflict of interest statement appear anywhere in the article text provided, so it is not possible to say who paid for this work or what the authors declared.

Do not read this as proof that occupational therapy practitioners delivering exercise improves substance use outcomes. Most of the studies in the review were not run by occupational therapy practitioners, and the authors say the profession's own role therefore cannot be established from them. 'Strong evidence' here means that several well-designed trials pointed the same way, not that the size of the benefit has been measured.