Occupational therapy is a health care profession aimed at enabling people to live life to its fullest.
To occupational therapists, a “full” life means engagement in the activities that a person wants and needs to do, no matter what injury, illness, condition, disability, lifestyle, or environment stands in the way.
These everyday human activities are what we call “occupations,” and they are the building blocks of our physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual health.
Occupational therapists help people to perform, modify, or adapt their skills and activities in order to live healthier, happier, and more productive lives.
Equipped with a solid grounding in both the medical and social sciences, occupational therapists work with people of all ages across the entire lifespan, from newborn infants to elders in hospice care.
Occupational therapists provide interventions in varied settings, including schools, hospitals, homeless shelters, nursing facilities, community clinics, private practices, corporations, executive health centers and wellness resorts.
With the growing number of returning military service members, the emerging autism epidemic, and an aging baby boomer population, demand for occupational therapists will continue to be strong, now and into the foreseeable future.
In Ghana, many workers in all aspect of profession have overlooked the importance and existences of occupational therapy. Thousands of people in Ghana needs occupational therapy but do not know where and how to get the treatment.
Many deformities and deaths can be averted if the services of occupational therapists are encouraged in the country.
In Ghana, many health institutions do not have the needed requirements to teach such enviable course for the betterment of the nation, but thanks to Greenhills School of Health Sciences. Greenhills School of Health Sciences has made history in Ghana by training and graduating the very first locally trained and professionally certified Occupational Therapy Assistants in this country.
World Occupational Therapy Day was first launched on 27th October 2010 and since then, it has become an important date in the occupational therapy calendar to promote and celebrate the profession internationally.
The aim is that the WFOT World Occupational Therapy Day will be integrated with other national celebrations and promotions of the mission and goals of occupational therapy.
Many countries hold occupational therapy week or month in October.