Date Presented 04/05/19
The abstracts of articles published between 2007 and 2016 in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy were analyzed. The most common theme in these articles was behavior-based interventions in children, which showed a significant increase in the latter half of the study period. Considering that 13–20% of American children experience mental disorders, this represents a significant step toward enhancing the individual coping skills of children and transitioning them into a productive adult life.
Primary Author and Speaker: Allyson St. Pierre
PURPOSE: Changes in the delivery of healthcare and the increasing emphasis on Evidence Based Practice have necessitated the need to identify trends in occupational therapy (OT) research. A recent analysis of the titles of articles published in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy (AJOT) from 2007-2016 completed by this group, has observed a substantial increase in the number of articles related to intervention and assessment in children. While this provided a valuable insight into the direction of OT research, the exact nature of the interventions could not be elucidated. Hence, the specific aim of this descriptive study is to identify the precise nature of current interventions, and determine how closely these research trends conform to the overarching goals of the OT profession.
METHOD: Abstracts of all the American Journal of Occupational Therapy (AJOT) articles published from 2007-2016 were retrieved on July 30th, 2018 from Pubmed (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) by using the key word “American Journal of Occupational Therapy”. PubMed is a free search engine for accessing the MEDLINE database of biomedical publications.
Articles that were included in this study included reports of original research and reviews of previously published studies related to OT. A total of 943 articles were retrieved, and then organized by their individual years of publication.
A free, open access online platform (https://wordcounter.com/) was used to determine the most frequently occurring words in the abstracts of the articles that had been retrieved. For this study, a word was defined as a set of letters that are separated by spaces and punctuation marks.
RESULTS: The most frequently occurring word in the abstract of articles was “children” (25.98%) which showed a significant increase (p<0.05) over the period of 2012-2016 as compared to the previous five years. The most commonly word associated with “children” was “interventions”. A detailed analysis of this finding revealed that interventions that were carried out in children in decreasing frequency included: behavior-based (38.62%), motor-based (30.06%), sensory-based (23.51%) and cognitive-based (7.81%) interventions. In addition, over the period of 2007-2016, there has been a significant increase (p<0.05) in behavior-based interventions while the incidence of other forms of intervention remained relatively unchanged.
CONCLUSION: Pediatric mental health is an emerging niche in OT, considering that 13%–20% of American children experience a mental disorder (Arbesman, Bazyk, & Nochajski, 2013). The development of behavioral skills in children are critical for decreasing problematic behaviors and stress, and increasing individual coping skills. Children are extremely susceptible to the acquisition of good and bad behavioral traits, which is also the period when they are most amenable to behavioral interventions. One of the major challenges in mental health is that individuals with mental disabilities often experience disparities and inequities in employment, education, health and social relationships in adult life due to their limited ability and available resources to improve their condition (Wehman, Sima, Ketchum, West, Chan & Luecking, 2015). Hence the increased research focus on behavior based interventions will enable the transition of a child into a productive adult (Wehman, et al, 2015). Therefore this study demonstrates that the currentbehavior-based interventions research in OT aligns with the American Occupational Therapy Association’s Framework-III (2014) that supports interventions on children that focus on health promotion, self-management, educational services, and environmental modification through the use of OT-based interventions.
References
Arbesman, M., Bazyk, S., & Nochajski, S. M. (2013). Systematic review of occupational therapy and mental health promotion, prevention, and intervention for children and youth. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 67, e120-e130. http://dx.doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2013.008359
Wehman P, Sima AP, Ketchum J, West MD, Chan F, & Luecking R. (2015). Predictors of successful transition from school to employment for youth with disabilities. J Occup Rehabil. 25, 323-334. doi:10.1007/s10926-014-9541-6.
