The hidden magic of Occupational Therapy | Jill Martin | TEDxYouth@Haileybury
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cm3so1a7H8 Video ID: _Cm3so1a7H8 ============================================================ [Applause] [Music] i know something about you i know that you or someone you know well has poor mental health we're all affected by problems with mental health it's everywhere and if you haven't heard about this then i'm a little bit worried about your mental health because we all have mental health don't we just like we have physical health and just like those days where we all experience a terrible cold or a crippling backache at some point in our lives we or someone we care about will find ourselves feeling totally stuck what to do well it's not as if there's no help out there there's so much help out there brilliant let's get help there's wellness coaches lifestyle coaches neuroscientists and psychotherapists cbt dbt art music therapy there's aromatherapy cupping therapy neuroscientists and psychologists mindful laughing oh and there's goat yoga there's even goat yoga all of these incredible people doing all of this fantastic work the problem then though is that we can't think straight there we are feeling not quite right and we're overwhelmed saturated with choice making a decision is hard enough at the best of times i mean don't ever come shopping with me i always find myself six hours later checked out every store bought nothing exhausted tired beyond flustered headache i don't know about you but when i'm feeling suboptimal on the emotional well-being front i'm not always best placed to make a decision particularly one that concerns my health and well-being i listen to people and they say to me i want to move forward with my life and it's getting a bit tricky here my gosh i just want to wake up in the morning and look forward to a nice cup of tea let alone getting down to regents park and doing downward dogs surrounded by goats i just want to know how to take that first step you know how to put that one toe on the carpet next to the bed in the morning without feeling like it's totally terrifying and pointless what if there were another way i mean what on earth are we supposed to do what if there was a profession that offered choice and supported you to make the right choices all in one place with one mental health practitioner so like a mental health gp and what if this practitioner was all about treating and healing through the things you need and want to do and what if this profession could tell literally dozens of things about you develop mentally physically emotionally just by observing what you do and how you do it and what if this profession could work for the full and fast spectrum of mental health from full-blown psychosis to feeling out of sorts and what if you didn't have to cancel your therapy session if you couldn't get out of bed or even turn on the zoom because you felt so terrible because someone who gets it would come round to you and work with you in your own home environment well what if i told you there is such a profession and it's called mental health occupational therapy ot for short and can i just say for the record it's got nothing to do with occupational health that's a whole other talk from a completely different person have you ever heard of it mental health ot don't worry if you haven't i i hadn't either not until the summer of 1990 i got myself a cleaning job in an occupational therapy department and on my very first day this woman marched up to the studio door flung it open she was pretty agitated and people were starting to back away from her and she started shouting and screaming and she thought she was going to start throwing some furniture around she seemed really distraught you know like stuck in the intensity of her emotions i was scared i didn't know what to do i thought some men in my coach you know some doctors would turn up and do something drastic and medical like i'd seen in the movies but you want to know what happened a mental health occupational therapist appeared i will never forget her name jean grant she was totally calm and exceptionally caring and it was clear that she knew and understood why this woman was feeling so infuriated jean guided this woman towards a chair and handed her a piece of clay and together they started to create this beautiful piece of sculptured art and the woman totally calmed down as she used her hands through the soft smooth soothing clay at times they seemed to be talking other times they were closing their eyes and taking these deep breaths jean had unstuck her using something she knew this lady loved art and integrating what we would now refer to as mindfulness and as i stared through the little window in that door i thought to myself i want to do that i want to be the person with a magic box of tools that knows what approach is right for that person and where they're at i want to be the person that knows if what you need is simply to be listened to over a nice cup of tea or to go rock climbing and re-engage in your core strength and sense of achievement i want to be the person that teaches you relaxation technique without you feeling like i'm preaching because we're having fun going at your pace driven only by what matters to you imagine me on a monday morning playing uno with a young man who has clinical depression except i'm not just playing uno i'm assessing his fine and gross motor function his sensory awareness his emotional state his non-verbal communication and i'm asking him about his family and his friends and his home and his work and his passions and his interests and his feelings and he's telling me because i'm not patronising him or overwhelming him but just playing uno right it may look like a simple calm ordinary game of cards but underneath i'm like one of those sas navy seals people you know like jason bourne of the clinical world assessing a hundred different things all at once mental health occupational therapy is holistic it's about working with what activities are meaningful to you what do you need and want to do what's relevant to your life is it to cook a sunday dinner or to get back to university and become a neuroscientist back when i started as an occupational therapy student 32 years ago i didn't hear very many people talking about the power of things like nutrition and sleep and exercise i didn't see people paying attention to all this gorgeous stuff that's since been so clinically written and raved about i don't want to sound smug but us ots we've been onto this stuff for decades and it's written integrated into our practice from the very first day of our clinical training but the problem is you're more likely to try the goat yoga than you are mental health ot why because unless you find yourself really unwell on a hospital ward or living in assisted accommodation mental health ot doesn't really exist we've become sort of stuck ourselves as a profession sort of confined within the walls of what's deemed comfortable and that's got to change i've been busy on a mission to take mental health occupational therapy out of the hospital wards and into a more accessible model i passionately believe in my profession and i wholeheartedly want mental health ot to get the recognition it deserves i want more people to use ot and to train to be occupational therapists because we are living in a mental health epidemic and we are really missing the integration of this powerful model and the value that it holds and that's why i set up my mental health ot practice in 2018 and then at the beginning of 2020 i got a business partner we expanded yeah a service based on face-to-face contact with people in their own homes and the community launched at the beginning of a global pandemic slight deflation of mood on march the 23rd nevertheless we've been inundated with people struggling with various aspects of their mental health and because ots are master problem solvers we got creative and found different ways to help them to become unstuck one of those people was matthew matt was a 26 year old young man who got hit by anxiety and depression when he was at university and after quitting his course and coming home to his mum and dad matt slowly disengaged and became isolated from the things that had previously given him meaning and purpose and joy by the time matt got to me he tried four different types of psychotherapy cbt and medication and none of it had worked the day that i met matt my sas navy seal skills were out in full force and before the hour was up my ot sniffer dog senses had recognized that this young man's anxiety and depression was probably likely to be caused by an undiagnosed autism so after an assessment with an autism specialist i was proved right and bit by bit matt got his life back matt got his life back because he now understood that it wasn't his fault that none of these other therapies had worked and it made sense why university had been such a challenge and it opened him up to working with us ots with our specialist knowledge of mental health and neurodiversity we engaged matt in the things that he loved animals maths and tennis and we spent sessions tidying his bedroom and embracing new organizational structures or chatting at the local cafe about techniques to support his self-care we even integrated matt into a group where he could meet like-minded people and find a sense of community and his relationships with his family improved because his relatives now had a new perspective and a new understanding of matt's perspective of the world matt was stuck just like we all get stuck sometimes an ot with its enormous box of tools really helped just like it could help you or your partner or your sibling or your child so this is an invitation to join me and find out more about the power of mental health ot and how it can reconnect us all to a sense of meaning and purpose thank you [Applause]