Occupational Therapy in addiction: from theory to practice

Occupational Therapy is a discipline whose conceptual framework, objectives and methods are well established. Addiction is one of the areas in that is involved. However, the available occupational texts lacking in many cases its own explanatory framework, resorting too often to other imported from prevailing disciplines. This leads, on the one hand, to a poor scientific production and, on the other one, to a secondary role for our discipline in therapeutic programs. This paper presents a proposed explanatory framework of addiction from an occupational perspective. Some authors start considering that addiction is itself an occupation, to the extent that it provides a role and significance to the addict himself. From this perspective, it makes occupational sense some recent experimental paradigms, such as environmental enrichment, or concepts such as empowerment. The functional cognitive rehabilitation, widely applied in clinical of brain injury, represents another complementary approach to addiction clinic. There are own assessment instruments that measure or systematize the relevant occupational variables. Occupational Therapy is able to take its own role, main and indispensable prominence in the treatment of addiction