For as long as I've been an OT, I've been hearing about occupational therapy's advocacy to be recognized as behavioral health providers.

This is frankly a little confusing, since OT has deep roots in mental health care — and many of us became OTs because of the unique way the profession holistically considers mental health and physical health, and how the two intersect in everyday function.

Things honestly become even more confusing when you start to dig into what exactly it means to be recognized as a behavioral health provider. What doors does that open to us? What is the current patchwork of states — and what is our desired future?

There is no better person to help us speak to these questions than Halley Read. Halley is the lead author on "Occupational Therapy: A Potential Solution to the Behavioral Health Workforce Shortage," published in Psychiatric Services in 2024.

Which gets at exactly the right question: why are we limiting the mental health workforce, when mental health workers are so desperately needed?

This course is intended for OTs, to help us understand this situation — but also for our fellow members of the healthcare team, to understand what OT can contribute and what policy changes would let us work in our full scope.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/ot-as-mental-health-providers

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

Try 2 free OT Potential courses here:
https://otpotential.com/free-ot-ceus

Support the show