Caitlyn's OT Blog

Hi! Check out my debriefing video for OT640! 

Attending the 12-Step Al-Alon Meeting was a great experience. I originally wanted to attend the AA meeting, but it was a closed group so we attended Al-Anon. I honestly had never heard of Al-Anon before, and I assumed it was just like AA. However, I learned that this meeting is for people that are worried about someone with a drinking problem. Besides my sister and I, the group consisted of 4 people. They explained there usually are more, but many people were gone to a conference. With only 6 people in the room, it was a very personal environment. I think this environment had a huge impact on the session. Since it was such a small group, each member had plenty of time to talk, and it didn’t seem as intimidating as sharing with a large group would have. I thought it was really neat that the members of this group follow the same steps as the members in AA do. At the beginning of the session, one of the members mentioned that the focus of the group is not on the alc...

This was an integrated literature review of studies conducted with children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) who are negatively impacted by limited participation in daily occupations. This study looked at one-on-one treatment versus group therapy interventions for children with DCD. 192 studies of children with DCD receiving group therapy were examined, resulting in the following themes: achieving a new level of perceived competence, feeling a sense of belonging, and learning how the condition affects them and strategies to overcome challenges.  The findings of this review suggest that when the CO-OP (group) approach is administered in a group therapy format and process, it has the potential to benefit children with motor difficulties in both physical and psycho-social domains.  I think this article is extremely interesting. We often only hear of using the group process in mental health settings, but this article looked at using it as an alternative interv...

I facilitated a group on "Caring for Pets". The group lasted about 45 minutes and consisted of introductions, a warm up, a discussion about the responsibilities and costs involved with a pet, the benefits of pets, and then we had an activity. I think the most significant part of group for me was realizing how important it is to read your group. It was the end of the day on Friday, after a very long week in school.  The group was exhausted and stressed, so I tried to make it a fun and low-key session. I was going to have the group write down several different topics to discuss, but once I saw how everyone was tired, I decided we could just make the discussion open for people to share ideas if they wanted to. I am very proud of the way my group went. I felt very comfortable facilitating, which I think was due to my being more comfortable with my group and the group process, as well as loving the topic I was leading the group on. The introduction consisted of me introducing...

For my leadership summit, I met with Camille Vaughn, Rachel Scarbrough, and Emily White. Camille is facilitating her group on meal prep, Emily is facilitating on volunteering, and Rachel is facilitating budgeting. This honestly turned out to be more beneficial than I thought it would be. With the input of the group, I was able to create a better plan for how my facilitation would go. Just simply talking through my plan out loud helped me to work out all the kinks, and having other students to brainstorm with was extremely helpful! This meeting definitely helped prepare me for facilitating my group.

Class Make-Up (1/31/18) The day I missed class, we discussed the different theories in group practice. The theories we talked about are: Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic, Behavioral-Cognitive, Cognitive Disabilities, Developmental, Sensory-Motor, MOHO. The Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic theory is loosely structured, with the leadership style as a facilitator. Once the task has been presented, the group usually goes with the flow. The goal of this is for the individuals to gain insight. It is meant to be very introspective, consisting of projective techniques and activities such as house-tree-person. The Behavioral-Cognitive is my personal favorite. This is highly structured, with the directive leadership style. The goal is to change an individual’s thoughts and behaviors by incorporating activities that focus on the alteration of the thought process. Cognitive disabilities is also a highly-structured group with a highly directive leadership style. It is created based on combinin...