New Frontiers in Psychosocial Occupational Therapy explores plans and processes to improve patient care through enhanced therapist/patient relationships and strong alliances with mental health advocate groups. Practitioners will find valuable suggestions and ideas for offering quality, cost-efficient services while therapy educators will gain insight into the changing health care environment. Containing articles written by therapists, students, patients, and occupational therapy educators, New Frontiers in Psychosocial Therapy will help you offer or teach services that take patients'needs directly into consideration. New Frontiers in Psychosocial Occupational Therapy examines advances in the field and provides you with information about current mental health care trends at the national, state, and local levels. This book discusses, for example, how programs in Kentucky, California, Wisconsin, and New York offer excellent care and less costly services and promote practitioner/patient relationships. Offering many opportunities to stimulate new approaches to practice, New Frontiers in Psychosocial Occupational Therapy will give you insight into specific ways to improve services, such as:

• recommending strategies for overcoming barriers to professional and personal security in the changing health care system by managing feelings, promoting the social contract in health care, and acquiring skills that transcend medical necessity
• developing relationships with consumer groups and listening more closely to consumer needs
• giving patients advice on the advantages and detriments of disclosing or not disclosing a disability to an employer
• integrating consumer needs into psychiatric rehabilitation programs through empowerment principles
• using the Internet to receive information on memberships to organizations, books, conferences, medications, and research
• increasing students'success as occupational therapists by educating them on reimbursement issues, legal and political systems, marketing strategies, and advocacy roles
• using Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) to help students assess their progress and practice concerns
  
  New Frontiers in Psychosocial Occupational Therapy features several students'personal accounts of their fieldwork experiences and how they overcame the fear of inadequacy, learned additional procedural skills in occupational therapy assessment, became comfortable with group leadership, and, as a result, learned the importance of patient/practitioner relationships as they relate to improved services. Combining present programs and future implications, New Frontiers in Psychosocial Occupational Therapy will assist you in instituting changes to programs that will meet the growing needs of your patients or students.