Pablo Luna
A permanent disability such as cerebral palsy comes with physical and mental challenges which can deter the sufferer from independently performing daily tasks and activities many of us take for granted such as eating, bathing, dressing, or walking.
Occupational therapy can help address these issues even better than physical therapy does because it stays focused on actually achieving those individual goals. Yet, despite occupational therapy’s obvious benefits, many caregivers are still skeptical about its ability to help with cerebral palsy.
What Is Occupational Therapy?
Occupational therapy focuses on helping an individual improve his or her quality of life following an injury or disability affecting their motor skills by developing his or her ability to reach peak performance in the given circumstances when performing daily activities such as eating, brushing teeth, changing clothes, and so on.
Occupational therapy (OT) is not to be mistaken for physical therapy (PT). Just like physical therapy, occupational therapy will help the patient improve dexterity, muscle tone, muscle strength, and coordination, but this is not its end goal. These are just ways of helping the patient better perform certain tasks and achieve independent living and a higher level of self-care and productivity at school or work.
Unlike physical therapy for cerebral palsy, OT uses a holistic approach with clearly defined goals toward achieving independent living. A cerebral palsy patient can strengthen his or her muscles and work on coordination and other deficits caused by the condition with a physical therapist, but he or she can switch to an occupational therapist to get help with the improvement of basic skills.
How Effective is Occupational Therapy?
OT is often recommended as a part of the treatment program of children with cerebral palsy. Studies have shown that undergoing occupational therapy for at least six months, twice a week, can greatly improve cerebral palsy patients’ visual-perceptual skills and motor skills. OT has been also found to boost the ability of children with developmental delays to achieve their goals by up to 75% in educational settings.
Occupational therapy can help children with cerebral palsy improve their overall ability to learn by removing the obstacles in the way of formal instruction in 80% of patients. Nearly 90% of teachers who supervised disabled children while on an OT plan can confirm that this type of therapy can have an instrumental role in helping children with motor impairment and other developmental issues reach their academic goals.
How Can Occupational Therapy Help?
Occupational therapy can help cerebral palsy patients develop, and improve the skills required to perform day-to-day activities at home, school, or work. An occupational therapist will:
· Assess the patient’s needs and diagnosis.
· Review medical records and investigate the patient to build a personalized treatment plan.
· Help patients get better at performing certain tasks when a disability prevents them from living independently.
· Working on the patient’s motor skills, muscle tone, coordination, dexterity, and balance.
· Developing exercises and workout programs that can help address certain issues affecting their patients such as visual impairments or chronic pain.
· Helping the patient to learn how to properly use mobility aids and assistive devices like eating aids to improve coordination and mobility.
· Assess the patient’s progress and suggesting ways of improving the treatment plan.
· Educating caregivers, teachers, and employers on the needs of a person with cerebral palsy.
· Offering suggestions on how the patient’s home, workplace, or learning environment could be improved to better accommodate the patient.
Conclusion
Unlike physical therapy – which focuses on improving the movement of the human body following an injury or disability, occupational therapy helps with mastering everyday activities in a bid to help the patient achieve the highest level of independent living that his or her current situation permits.
Occupational therapy should be an integrated part of the treatment plan for a cerebral palsy patient due to its many benefits caregivers and educators can swear by. In cerebral palsy, recovering, developing, or improving certain functions of the human body to help the patients better function independently is every patient’s prime goal, which occupational therapists are laser-focused on by default.
