Intro to Mental Health OT

Earn 1 hour of continuing education by joining OT Potential after taking this course.

Course Description

Mental health is one of occupational therapy’s smallest practice areas.

Because relatively few OTs work in traditional mental health settings, it can feel like an enigma:

• What does mental health OT actually look like day to day?
• Where do we fit on interdisciplinary teams?
• And how does occupation truly show up in mental health care?

At the same time, there may be no better home for occupational therapy’s core values than mental health practice.

In this course, Intro to Mental Health OT, we zoom out to ground you in the big picture—while also getting practical about what mental health OT looks like in real clinical contexts.

We’ll be joined by a practicing occupational therapist and champion of the profession, Michelle Burlyga, OTR/L.

Together, we’ll walk through:

• Common assessments used in mental health OT
• Core treatment approaches and intervention strategies
• Key considerations for mental health practice that differ from other OT settings
• Why mental health competencies are increasingly essential—no matter where you practice

You’ll leave with a clearer mental model of mental health occupational therapy—and a stronger sense of how OT’s distinct focus on occupation can play a powerful role in supporting mental health and recovery.

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OT Potential courses are presented as live webinars, then released on-demand video and audio via the OT Potential Podcast. Attendance in the live webinar will be indicated on your certificate. Learn more about how our courses help meet live webinar requirements, and OT CEU requirements overall.

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Learning Objectives

1. You will recognize occupation-based assessments utilized in mental health care.

2. You will be able to identify evidence-backed treatment interventions that OTs can utilize for mental health promotion and prevention.

Agenda

Intro (5 minutes)

Discussion (40 minutes)

1. How did you come to practice in mental health OT? 
2. What’s the fundamental mindset shift OTs need to make when moving into mental health practice—especially if they’re coming from a more medically oriented setting?
3. For an OT new to mental health, how would you recommend spending the weeks leading up to a first mental health role?
4. What essential information do you want to gather about a mental health setting before starting—whether inpatient, outpatient, or community-based?
5. What assessments are your go-tos in mental health OT, and how do you decide which tools to use?
6. What types of interventions do you most often return to in mental health practice?
7. What considerations in mental health practice feel most different from other OT settings? 
8. What are mental health approaches, you feel like therapists could take with them regardless of setting. 
9. What hot topics or emerging issues have been on your mind related to mental health occupational therapy?

Live Q&A (10 min)

Closing (5 min)

Supporting Research and Journal Articles

• Mental Health Promotion, Prevention, and Intervention in Occupational Therapy Practice  
• Occupational therapy interventions for adults with severe mental illness: a scoping review
• A systematic review into the effectiveness of occupational therapy for improving function and participation in activities of everyday life in adults with a diagnosis of depression
• Autism and Mental Health: The Role of Occupational Therapy

Target Audience/Educational Level

Our target audience is occupational therapy practitioners who are looking to learn about mental health occupational therapy. The educational level is introductory.

Financial and Non-financial Disclosures

It is the policy of OT Potential to disclose any financial and non-financial interest the provider or instructor may have in a product or service mentioned during an activity. This is to ensure that the audience is made aware of any bias of the speaker.

We here at OT Potential have no financial stake in this topic.

Speakers

Michelle Burlyga, OTR/L

Michelle is an experienced occupational therapist and U.S. Army Reserve Major with over a decade of work and management in the mental health care industry across civilian and military populations. She grew up in Southern California, already familiar with behavioral health, schools, and child development systems, as her mother was a high school special education teacher, and her father was a psychologist.

Michelle earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Occupational Therapy from San Jose State University. Prior to Ohana, she spent more than a decade developing and running an occupational therapy program at a large non-profit behavioral health outpatient clinic for youth and young adults with serious mental illnesses and early psychosis symptoms. Michelle has a passion for traveling and meeting people from all cultures and backgrounds.

Sarah Lyon, OTR/L

Sarah’s passion is helping fellow OT practitioners translate evidence into daily practice. Sarah earned her BA in religion from St. Olaf College, then earned her master’s degree in occupational therapy from New York University in 2011.

Since then, she’s worked in numerous facilities, including a critical access hospital, an acute trauma hospital, and a state inpatient psychiatric hospital. Sarah is the founder/owner of OT Potential. Read more about OT Potential here.

This course was designed to meet your continuing education requirements

We designed the courses in the Club to meet the requirements for “online” and “independent/self-study” courses. To verify the requirements from your specific state (within the US), check out our post, OT Continuing Education Requirements. If you are outside of the United States and have questions, please contact us.

We are proud to be an AOTA Approved Provider and to meet the requirements for your NBCOT renewal.

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