Let's talk about how we teach Mental Health in BA programs

SivanRegev

Hello! My name is Sivan Regev, and I teach the subject of mental health in OT for BA students in a college of ultra-orthodoxy in Israel. This year at the WFOT congress, I met some new friends who also teach MH courses, and I wondered how other places teach the subject.

It would be great if you can share:

One (or more) articles or videos that you are fond about in your course.
Your main goal in this course.

This way we can all get inspired and keep in touch to enrich our OT perspectives in mental health!

Materials:

A great article about cognitive strategies. I think it is a bit intensive to my students but it is a great take home material.
Toglia, J. P., Rodger, S. A., & Polatajko, H. J. (2012). Anatomy of cognitive strategies: A therapist's primer for enabling occupational performance. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 79(4), 225-236.‏ https://doi.org/10.2182/cjot.2012.79.4.4
A picture of my best slideshow from my PhD. It has my systematic-review with the chart that show the studies in OT that mesure executive function and IADL.

My main goal is to inspire them to investigate their own way of connecting to others and how to ask questions in respectful way.

Waiting forward to hear your thoughts!
Dr. Sivan Regev

JillBroderick

Dear Sivan,
I was pleased to see your interest in working with executive function in the arena of mental health. I am currently in my capstone semester in the PP-OTD program at Boston University. I have worked with people with stress-related illnesses for the last 35 years and found that unaddressed stress or ANS dysregulation adversely affects adult executive function. As a result, I have been using biofeedback and self-regulation techniques to diminish stress and enhance executive function to help improve engagement in adult roles. Biofeedback is an excellent tool to use with people, allowing them to see the changes they can make in their physiology. I hope to promote the use of biofeedback and self-regulation in occupational therapy practice as a standard of care.

I would love to have OTPs in the US and abroad learn how to use and integrate biofeedback into their work. Our professional toolbox is missing the opportunity to directly impact the CNS, decrease stress-related symptoms, and improve executive function. I think it could benefit your student's education and work with people in mental health.

Please feel free to contact me via WFOT.

MartinP

I work in mental health in northern Canada and have worked with more than 40 OT students over my career. I find that Bio Feedback is very powerful when working with clients and students can learn to use it very quickly. I have been using and teaching the heartmath program that focuses on supporting individuals in balancing their heart rate variability (balancing adrenaline and cortisol). The biofeedback isn't necessary to use the approach but some people find it very helpful. https://www.heartmath.org/