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Surviving And Thriving OT

For my journal review, I decided to talk about a little more sensitive topic, and how group therapy can be an effective intervention to use with a particular population. I found an article entitled State of the Science: Group Therapy Interventions for Sexually Abused Children which was an interesting read to say the least. According to the article, 16–27% of females and 8–16% of males retrospectively report child sexual abuse (CSA)  incidents.. that is a staggering statistic to me, which makes me wonder how OT can enter into especially if there is a significant population that needs critical psychological and traumatic care. The article listed multiple long-term effects of CSA on children that follow them long after their childhoods... many of them experience occupational imbalance, PTSD, and "negative life orientation, which impacts both their functioning and occupations as they grow up. So what can be done? well this article specifically looked at the effects of social support in the form of group therapy, and how it could impact the trajectory of these CSA children's lives. There are several immediate benefits to this approach: 1. it is more cost effective 2. children may feel safer in a group rather than in one on one therapy and 3. its major impact on therapeutic impact on several of the effects listed above. Group therapy provides another dimension to recovery which may not necessarily be addressed in one on one therapy sessions. The major conclusion that this article came to was that group therapy sessions are indeed an incredible effective intervention for children who have experienced as CSA. Within a group, group members can process life events together and fight the shame and stigma that is often associated with sexual abuse. This provides a safe processing space for these children, which truly could have a significant impact on those later effects that are often seen after childhood traumas. Even though this was technically an article posted by nurses ,
this article gave a lot of food for thought, and I definitely think that this subject falls under our OT practice.   OT's are trained to lead group sessions with individuals from all different walks of life and backgrounds, and could really bring in a therapeutic use of occupation while working with a group like this.  I am posting the link below so that more of my classmates can read up on this subject as well.
http://www.psychiatricnursing.org/article/S0883-9417(13)00114-3/fulltext
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                        Yesterday I had the opportunity to facilitate my second group of this semester, except this time, I led the group by myself. This was quite different from the time before because I had to come up with the group activities and discussions by myself instead of working with another classmate. I choose to lead this group on home management and establishment, which when reflecting back on this group, I'm not really sure why I chose this particular topic. This is something that I am not as familiar with and so writing this group protocol was a bit of challenge. I found it especially challenging to find both creative and engaging activities for the group too to do together, but finally after a lot of thinking and searching I came up with two activities. Yesterday I was so very nervous before facilitating the group. I think I was worried that my group was going to be boring and that I wouldn't be able to really get the group members to engage because many of them do not currently own houses. Once I started, however, I felt the nerves calm down. I introduced the group and the topic and myself to the group and then had everyone introduce themselves and do a quick warm-up activity. I forgot to communicate the expectations about the group at the beginning of the session, and wish on second thought that I had done this because I think it would have changed the group dynamics to be a bit more to be more organized. For our activity, we created a visual schedule that each group member was to personalize to their own particular home tasks. I may not have explained the activity clearly enough and also may have provided too many options for the stickers for their calendars because by the end of the activity when members shared their visual schedules several of members had focused more on tasks that weren't related to home management at all such as studying for their upcoming tests, or cleaning out their car. Internally I was a bit frazzled by this because I didn't quite know in the moment how to ask the group members to think a bit more about the actual topic or about chores or house tasks rather than other to do items. However, I did get the group members to share whether or not visual charts and schedules were helpful to them to keep up with tasks they needed to complete. I applied this activity to their real lives by asking them to incorporate at least three tasks that they could put on their calendar that week to work on or improve. 

               All in all, I felt okay about this group facilitation, but realize that there is still definitely room for more improvement in my role as the facilitator. I think it is really important to choose topics for the groups you lead that you feel knowledgeable in so that you can feel confident about how to lead the discussion or how to facilitate better group processing and sharing. I did not feel as confident about home management as I liked, but it is a lesson learned (and I also am taking away a lot of new knowledge from having to write this group session!) I hope for more opportunities to lead groups in the near future or in a fieldwork. 






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About Me

Sarah Caitlin
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Well Hello There! If you are anything like me, then you are probably an occupational therapy student (or my teacher, hi Mrs. Lancaster!) who stumbled across this blog looking for an answer you googled. Or maybe for some, you are looking up information on OT school. If that's the case, welcome! I hope this blog will have fun posts (along with some tips and tricks) to surviving OT school and will give you a snapshot into what school is like in my particular program (which happens to be the best!). The best of luck to you!

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      • Group Therapy Journal Review
      • Facilitating Group Session: Home Management and Es...
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