Psychotherapy Within Occupational Therapy Literature: A Scoping Review.
Carrie Anne Marshall, Michelle Murphy, Kristina Marchiori and 11 others
PMID 35881541WHAT IT FOUND
Most occupational therapy literature on psychotherapy is commentary, not research.
Few studies test interventions, and those that do rarely measure occupational outcomes. Clinicians should verify local regulations before calling their activity-based or talk-based approaches psychotherapy.
Key findings
01Nearly half of the 207 included articles were non-empirical, with only 15% using experimental designs to evaluate interventions.
02Activity-based approaches were the most common intervention explored, appearing in 41.7% of articles, followed by psychodynamic and cognitive approaches at 31.4% each.
03Regulatory status varies by province, with Ontario explicitly allowing OTs to deliver psychotherapy as a controlled act, while Quebec restricts it to doctors and psychologists unless a permit is obtained.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The search was limited to English-language articles. Most included studies originated from the United States and the United Kingdom, so findings may not reflect other cultural contexts. Defining psychotherapy was difficult, and some relevant articles may have been excluded based on terminology. Racial characteristics of study participants were largely unavailable and not analyzed.
Declared interests
Funding was provided by an internal grant from Western University and a grant from the Canadian Occupational Therapy Foundation. No conflicts of interest are declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the volume of literature as evidence of efficacy. Nearly half the articles were non-empirical commentary, and very few tested interventions, so this review maps what has been discussed, not what has been proven to work.