What does Occupational Therapy (OT) for ADHD look like?
This is a great question - and one I often hear as an ADHD OT.
I think it may be helpful to start with reviewing OT as a whole before we narrow in on supporting ADHDers.
So….What is it that occupational therapists do?
Occupational therapists work with people to support them with their daily activities, or as we call them “occupations”. People may have challenges completing some of their daily tasks for a range of reasons. These reasons can be related to:
Health and abilities — including physical health, cognition, mood, neurological, or a combination of all factors
Environmental — physical barriers, systems, and social/ societal expectations
The activity itself — this can be things like cooking, household tasks, hygiene, work, hobbies, eating, sleeping, playing and many many more.
As OTs, we use a range of approaches to explore where the barrier is coming from, and how to overcome it.
So… if we look at ADHD….
For ADHDers, barriers to day-to-day tasks can come up in several areas. One main area we often explore is: “cognition”— which essentially means how our brain thinks and works. If you have heard the term “executive functioning”, this is a cognitive health factor that is often challenging for ADHDers. So, you can imagine that if our ADHD brain’s work differently than most (spoiler - they do), then there will be some barriers as we navigate neurotypical environments. Sometimes - we can change the environments (I LOVE when this happens), but sometimes we need to figure out how to compensate or reduce these differences.
In addition to cognitive health factors, mental health plays a huge role in ADHDers’ wellbeing and ability to carry out daily tasks. Clinicians who support ADHDers may directly target mental health symptoms first. Sometimes this approach is best, and other times, a combination of a functional approach is beneficial. As an ADHD OT, we will work with you to learn about these different areas of your life - finding the strengths and things that are going well… as well as the barriers. Then, we work together to address those barriers.
I have provided an overview of some examples of how ADHD OT may explore and reduce the barriers ADHDers face - check it out on the Services page.
