Looking Back to Move Forward: Canadian Occupational Therapy In Public Health, 1914-2019

Background.

Decades of literature demonstrate that occupational therapy is well-suited to collaborate with public health due to overlapping views of health. However, there has been little collaboration between these professions with few examinations of why they remain distinct.

Purpose.

This study examines historical events that have led to the present-day separation of occupational therapy and public health.

Method.

This narrative review and thematic analysis of the scholarly, archival, and grey literature was conducted to examine the development of both fields.

Findings.

Fifty texts were analyzed revealing four themes: the influence of structural and social forces; professional, societal, and institutional hindrances; potential for a shared vision; and next steps for integration. These themes highlight historical barriers to collaboration and provide evidence that occupational therapy could benefit public health.

Implications.

Collaboration between occupational therapy and public health has many potential benefits, however new approaches to bridge the divide are needed to advance collaboration.

[What Policy for the Management of Smoking During Pregnancy? - CNGOF-SFT Expert Report and Guidelines on the management for Smoking Management During Pregnancy]

Smoking during pregnancy is a public health problem. Individual screening is carried out in France during pregnancy consultations, followed by non-systemic care (with or without nicotine replacement therapy). In the UK, pregnant smokers are routinely screened during pregnancy follow-up and then referred to smoking cessation services. In order to improve their adherence, and smoking cessation, patients can be contacted, in particular by phone. We therefore recommend to systematically screen for smoking during pregnancy by asking the question of smoking or by measuring the CO exhaled during the various consultations, to offer care in collaboration with a local smoking cessation service and renew the requests if necessary. We need to develop these care networks in France.

[(Community) psychiatry, a parenthesis?]

Beyond an a priori antagonism between these two notions, alienism and mental health cultivate analogies as to the place to which they assign mental health. Is community psychiatry not therefore simply a parenthesis in the history of psychiatry? The question is raised therefore regarding the place given to subjectivity and complexity. What must be done to ensure that this parenthesis of community psychiatry does not close? It is perhaps a case of making use of the tools which institutional psychotherapy has developed to keep the community psychiatry spirit alive.

[Everyday practice in psychiatry and the politics of civilisation]

Daily clinical practice confronts us not only with the clinical aspect but also with the political. Political orientation has a direct impact on the way in which we carry out this clinical practice, as well as on the place of those who are outside the system. The politics of civilisation are therefore an option in the face of neoliberalism.