An occupational and rehabilitation perspective for institutional practice

The article aims to provide an occupational perspective on the lives of people with a serious mental illness who have committed a criminal offense and are incarcerated in a secure environment.

The article focuses on ways that institutions fail to meet occupational needs of such persons and the challenges for mental health and psychiatric rehabilitation professionals, including occupational therapists, in providing psychiatric rehabilitation to facilitate community integration and participation. The concepts of occupational deprivation, occupational imbalance, habits and occupational enrichment provide useful theoretical constructs underpinning practice endeavors.

Ovid using Medline, PsychINFO, CINAHL, OTDBase, and ProQuest.

There is a priority for research to validate tools to assess outcomes of occupations in secure settings, and the use of these tools to focus on which rehabilitation practices are correlated with establishing positive outcomes after release. Research evidence is also needed that demonstrates that occupational enrichment can result in observable and measurable outcomes that mitigate the negative effects of incarceration and support successful community re-entry of persons with mental illnesses who are offenders.