History of Occupational Therapy

1900-1939: ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT AND THE INFLUENCE OF WWI

Time line
y 1900: US Population Increases  Progressive era fuels reform  Increase of women in the work place y 1917: US enters WWI y 1919: WWI ends (Treaty of Versailles) y 1920: Women gain the right to vote y 1929: Great depression

Womens Movement and Influence

y Goal: establish selves outside of domestic sphere y Argument for:  Morally superior  Naturally nurturing  Alturistic y Reform impulses  Christian charity
Helping the

poor or the suffering

y Gender roles clearly defined within this period  Men: leadership in the public sector  Women: Establish institutes

Hull House
y Established by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr y All female and secular society for political and professional

training


Believed in scientific method for learning about social issues

y Goal: Bridge gap between middle-class reformers and the poor

y Hull-House Provided kindergarten and day care facilities for the

children of working mothers; an employment bureau; an art gallery; libraries; English and citizenship classes; theater, music and art classes. As the complex expanded, Hull-House supported a Labor Museum, the Jane Club for single working girls, meeting places for trade union groups, and many cultural events.
y Developed strong political ties with influential men and women

in Chicago y Meeting house for supporters of contemporary social movements



Chicago Arts and Crafts Society

Anti-Modernism
y Reaction to industrialism, emphasis on hand-made

products y Equated idle hands with immoral character y Linked to the arts & crafts movement, appreciation for meaning in simplicity (Transcendentalism)

This emphasis on the work ethic and on the idea that idleness produces an immoral character appears to have been intimately linked to early occupational therapy philosophy and to the arts-and-crafts movement or anti-modernism (Gutman,1995, p.259)

Arts and Crafts Movement

William Morris (1834-1896), Founder  William Morris was a poet, an artist, a designer, a businessman and a socialist reformer. y Founded In response to Industrial Revolution  Arts & Crafts movement stated that the Industrial Revolution, with its division of labor and mechanized manufacturing and factory production of household goods, had resulted in unsatisfying work conditions and poor quality products. y humans, not machines, completed objects; therefore, work was not abstracted from life but had a place at its very core -Ruskin

Arts & Crafts Reaches America

y Quality of design  Natural materials  Handmade designs  Simple in design y Quality of life  handicraft clubs  arts-and-crafts societies

Meanwhile in Medicine
y Advances y Shift towards a scientific foundation y Disease was understood in terms of physiological

processes rather than in terms of suffering or personal disorientation; specialists concerned themselves with organs and tissues rather than the whole patient (Levin, 1987, p. 249)

Alternative Medical Approach

y Dr. Herbert J. Hall  Work cure y Adolf Meyer, Mary Potter

Brooks Meyer, and William Rush Dunton

Curative occupation  Goal-directed activity


y Julia Lathrop y Susan Tracy  Nursing

These progressive physicians, Meyer, Hall, and Dunton, worked with social caretakers Lathrop and Tracy to link the holistic treatment of the past with the modern, scientific approaches (Levin, 1987, p. 250)

Sheltered Workshops
y Items sold in shops y Three purposes  Employ talented people who could earn a living by making authentic objects  To give spiritual support to craftspeople who pursued crafts as an avocation  To help employ the mentally and physically handicapped

y The early occupational therapy link to the arts-and-

crafts movement did not end with the demise of the therapeutic workshop.

Slagle and Meyer Unite

y Belief that life should become as routine as

possible y Meyers research on the unbalanced cycles of schizophrenia y Habit training= practice model Meyers and Slagle when at Henry Phipps Clinic at John Hopkins

Habit Training
Balance of occupational cycles

Habit Formation as a learning process

Sequence of occupational cycles

Roots of Rehabilitation in War

y US Army rehabilitation program based on

English reconstruction model



Bedside occupation and curative workshops

y Army Division of Orthopedics y British colonel Robert Jones  Orthopedic rehabilitation back in war  Societys social & moral responsibility

Reconstruction Aides

y 1918: Walter Reed Hospital (DC), Orthopedic

Department uses physiotherapists & occupational therapists y The employment of reconstruction aides [is] inadvisable [] it is not desirable to employ women in this type of work in military hospitals y Commanding officers begin to call for more

Evolution of reconstruction aides

y Requirements established for R.A. position

Educational training (medical disabilities, anatomy, physiology)  Demonstrate 3 fields occupation (crafts) y Reasons for pursuing career:  Economic necessity  Contribute something to society  Experienced y ACTIVITIES OF MEANING, PURPOSE


The Fight of Reconstruction Aides

ORTHOPEDISTS

RECONSTRUCTION AIDES: Physiotherapists, OTs

VOCATIONAL EDUCATORS

NURSES

After WWI
y Medical orientation in OT

-curriculums y First occupational therapy program -Milwaukee

Elizabeth Upham
y Started 1st OT program at Milwaukee Downer

College y Taught
 

Intensive work in crafts Lectures covering medical, psychology, sociology, economics and theory Hospital practice training

Elizabeth Upham
y Believed in moral character improvement through

purposeful activity y Established the program to align OT with stronger medical affiliation and offered more structured course work to gain more credibility for the profession

Elizabeth Upham
y Suggested a person who becomes an independent

wage-earner adds to the resource of the country, while every one who cannot increases the drain of dependents (p.259, Gutman, 1995).

Organizations
y National Society for promotion of Occupational

Therapy or also known as NSPOT. y First meeting in 1917



Only six people attended; George Edward Barton, Isabel Newton, Eleanor Clark Stagle, William Dunton Jr, Thomas Kinder and Susan Cox Johnson

y By 3rd meeting in 1919 300 people attended y Changed name to AOTA in 1921

Academia
y First issue of Archives of Occupational Therapy

published in 1922 by AOTA y Later became known as American Journal of Occupational Therapy (AJOT)

Federal Industrial Rehabilitation Act

y Passed in 1923 y Mandated hospitals that were caring for people with

industrial injuries or illness to use OT y program goal is to allow disabled individuals to be restored to useful, remunerative employment and to selfrespecting, self-supporting lives (Clark, 1945, p. 504)

Contributions we see now

y Womens Movement y Arts and Crafts Movement y Multidisciplinary y Holistic y AOTA  Standardization  Curriculum y Balance

References
y Crark, D. (1945). Industrial hygiene and the expandable federal state

y y

vocational rehabilitation program. American Journal of Public Health, 35, 504 Gutman, S.A.(1995). Influence of the U.S. military and occupational therapy reconstruction aides in World War I on the development of occupational therapy. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 49 (3), 256-262. Levine, R. (1987). The influence of the arts-and-crafts movement on the professional status of occupational therapy. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 41 (4), 248-254. Reed, K.L,& Sanderson, S.N. (1999). Concepts of occupational therapy. p.238-241. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Quiroga, V. A. M. (1995). Occupational therapy: the first 30 years 1900-1930. Bethesda, Maryland: American Occupational Therapy Association.