Generic and Specialist Interventions for People with Severe Mental Health Problems: Can Interventions Be Categorised?

Abstract

This study of a primary care based service investigated the type and frequency of occupational therapy and care management interventions delivered to people with severe mental health problems. The sample for the case study of one service was 25 people with enduring psychotic conditions who received 12 months' interventions from occupational therapy staff. The routinely recorded case data for each client were retrospectively analysed to generate intervention categories using content analysis and categorical aggregation. The total number of recorded interventions was then quantified using descriptive statistics. The most frequently recorded interventions are reported.

It was found that 60% of the 1877 interventions were categorised as specialist therapy (54% occupational therapy and 6% psychological interventions) and 40% were categorised as generic care management. It is suggested that clients may be better served by increasing the proportion of specialist occupational therapy interventions delivered by occupational therapists.

The case study design is limited because the results are not generalisable to other settings and several problems with the methods were found when attempting to analyse the interventions into separate and mutually exclusive categories. This small study contributes to debates about the role of community mental health occupational therapists and how to investigate what they do in routine practice.