Occupation-based Interventions in Patients With Severe Mental Disorders: A Review Study

The importance of participatory health governance has been acknowledged by the World Health Organization. Studies have shown the positive effects of participation in occupation-based intervention in patients with severe mental disorders, including schizophrenia, in outpatient and inpatient wards. The purpose of this article is to review the studies on occupation-based interventions in patients with severe mental disorders.

This is a narrative review study. A search for related articles was conducted in PubMed, Google Scholar, Cochrane, ScienceDirect, Scopus, OTseeker, PsycInfo databases using the keywords “severe mental disorder”, “serious mental illness”, “schizophrenia”, “Major depression disorder”, “Bipolar disorder”, “Occupational therapy”, Occupation”, and “Occupation-based intervention” without the time limitation. Titles and abstracts of 480 yielded articles were examined.

Twelve articles were reviewed; Two were related to occupation-based interventions in psychiatric inpatients, five were related to occupation-based interventions in outpatients, and five were related to occupation-based interventions in both inpatients and outpatients. Among these articles, one studied the challenges of using occupation-based interventions.

It seems that occupation-based interventions in inpatients and outpatients with mental illness have been used more to reduce symptoms, and less attention has been paid to the effectiveness of these interventions in maintaining and or improving occupational performance in these patients. The Canadian model of occupational performance and the recovery framework have been used in the design of these interventions. To achieve better results in psychosocial rehabilitation where occupation-based interventions lead to an increase in quality of life, the challenges in this area should be solved.