ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog

As promised, I wanted to review some of the articles in the current (March/April 2007) issue of the American Journal of Occupational Therapy. Since I have gotten some emails and blog comments asking me about the Hall & Case-Smith study (see reference below) I thought that this would be a good article to begin discussing. I was excited to see a study on this intervention technique because I have been hesitant in the past to fully embrace 'therapeutic listening.' In my opinion there is not adequate evidence to support promoting this technique so I was interested to see if this new study would change my mind. I believe that the authors should be commended for initiating this inquiry, but I also believe that their conclusions are far overstated. There are several fundamental flaws in their design that are concerning. To begin with, they used a convenience sample. This might have been appropriate if the study was truly exploratory, but there have been several other studies alrea...

About a year ago I posted about the use of passive tactile sensory stimulation and the lack of evidence that we have about the technique. You can find more discussion on this topic by typing in "Wilbarger" as a search term in this blog or by going to this link . In any event, I wanted to update a statement that I made last year that reads: While surfing around tonight I think I found a potential source of very useful information - and I think we might be able to thank Ruth Segal..." Dr. Segal did publish her article "Integration and application of a home treatment program: A study of parents and occupational therapists" (Segal & Beyer, 2006). This is an excellent article for all pediatric therapists to read. It reviews in detail the perspective of parents regarding home programs and the disconnect that sometimes occurs between the therapist's thinking and reality of normal family lifestyle. This article isn't directly assessing the effectiveness of ...