Considering the change in our activity participation during COVID-19
At the core of our training as Occupational Therapists, we are taught that participation in meaningful activities is crucial to wellbeing. How now, will the lock down restrictions posed affect this? What about long term social distancing? What does it mean for your wellbeing when many of your meaningful activities have been prohibited or the way in which you have to participate in them, is changed significantly?
What we’re all experiencing is a real thing and it’s been described so well by occupational therapists for a long time, its just happening on a mass scale right now, and probably as a result of something we could never have imagined. We might consider the current lock down to be the cause for occupational imbalance, occupational disruption or even occupational deprivation and where the effects of this aren’t well managed, it could lead to occupational dysfunction!
When activities are being prohibited or having to be adapted and done in a way that is unfamiliar, like working from home, home schooling children, online shopping and using face time for social contact, our activity profiles and sustained participation in activities is being challenged. It’s easy to fall into an unconstructive routine, feel completely overwhelmed or just avoid doing things altogether, and the effects of this may in the long term affect your wellbeing.
It doesn’t matter where you live, what your roles or your socioeconomic status is, we all had a routine and activity profile before COVID – 19. Your activity profile is the tasks or things you do, that are specific to your life. Your profile is usually made up of activities for work, socialising, pursuing hobbies or managing your personal and family responsibilities. While some of us may not have had a good balance of activities, usually too much work and not enough play, the current place we find ourselves in has likely imbalanced our activities resulting either in a lot of juggling while trying to work, cook, clean and parent, all from home or on the other hand, a sudden reduction in what we are required to do all day. This is resulting in or exacerbating occupational imbalance.
So now it seems relevant to share the idea of other concepts like occupational disruption, deprivation and dysfunction, as an introduction to begin understanding the effect of the activity restrictions on occupational wellbeing.
In an article published in the British Journal of Occupational Therapy (Whiteford, 2000), occupational disruption is described as a state that is usually temporary or transient rather than prolonged. The article states occupational disruption occurs when a person’s normal pattern of occupational engagement is disrupted due to significant life events, environmental changes, becoming ill or sustaining an injury from which full recovery is expected. One of the fundamental principles of occupational disruption is that it is a temporary state and one that, given supportive conditions, resolves itself.
Occupational deprivation is widely used as a term describing a state in which people are precluded from opportunities to engage in meaningful occupations, due to factors outside of their control. Whiteford describes occupational deprivation to differ from disruption, in that it usually occurs over time and in a context in which there is an absence of supporting conditions. More often, the forces that create a state of occupational deprivation are experienced as hostile.
We would often expect that prolonged or unresolved imbalance, disruption and deprivation would ultimately result in occupational dysfunction, a broad term to describe the deficits in an individual’s ability to meet the demands of the activities that are socially, professionally or personally relevant in life. Occupational dysfunction is described as a phenomenon that is ‘nested in a complex of factors all of which reflect and contribute to sustaining the performance, patterns of behaviour, identities, choices and so on, that reflect a life in trouble’ (Kielhofner 1995). We also expect, that in the presence of any existing deficits or disorders, any additional imbalance, disruption or deprivation might exacerbate any occupational dysfunction already present.
In order to avoid any detrimental long term effects on your function from having your meaningful activities altered significantly, it is now more than ever, really important to consider strategies to maintain participation in activities of daily living and OT’s are skilled in just that!
If you are struggling to figure out how to maintain participation in functional activities or even wondering how to be more productive in this time, we will have a look at practical strategies to do just that in the next article! And tell us about your experiences of occupational disruption, imbalance or deprivation....
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