Session 17- March 8 Homework

I really enjoyed this 'choose your own adventure' session. I have always been interested in adaptive sports. Learning about the difference between high tech, medium tech, and low tech assistive technology materials intrigued me because I always assumed high tech would be giant machines that helped people to walk instead of things like iPads. I was curious about this years Paralympic games after I read about this. Reading about the normalcy of the event and how some athletes were even suspended for doping hit home to me and made the article even more real. It goes to show that with a little adaptive help, any activity can be modified for any person regardless of diagnosis. The first podcast that I chose to listen to is the Psychosocial Impact of Childhood Obesity. This topic has always interested me as well and I wanted to dive deeper into the science behind it. Brittany Saviers is very knowledgeable about this subject and started out by letting listeners know that 17% of children from the ages of 2-19 meet the criteria of being obese. This is a huge percent of children and made me wonder what can OT's do to help children struggling with this. She advised that self esteem is one of the biggest markers of depression and children struggling with obesity have much lower self esteem than a 'typical' child. Other themes she found is that children with obesity show a lower body satisfaction, and have increased suicidal ideation. These stem from weight based bullying and victimization, social exclusion, isolation, and occupational deprivation, which all results in a vicious cycle of more depression. Saviers advised that occupational therapists can help facilitate a change by supporting the children and families who struggle with obesity and assessing their occupational performance in order to help lower depression and help these children engage in meaningful activities instead of just focusing on diet and exercise. We can look at home, family, and school environments and assist in those areas to help the client become more well rounded in general.

The next podcast that intrigued me is Can Occupational Therapy Help with ADHD? Stephanie Lancaster is the guest on this podcast and is very knowledgeable in this subject due to her experience in the school systems working with students with this diagnosis. Lancaster advised that it is a good idea for children who are showing early signs ADHD including disorganization to have therapy because the diagnosis can impact many areas of life even up to adulthood. The barriers that children with ADHD can face are learning, self help skills, social interaction and play skills, and interacting with other children. I loved hearing about the 'just right challenge' in different words and how it is important to not challenge these clients too much or coddle them too much in order to help these students be more independent. There is an optimal level of alertness or arousal that people need to be at. Lancaster's analogy about the car engine put this into simpler terms for me and helped me understand exactly what this is. For pediatric OT she uses the Dunn Sensory Profile which consists of a school version that the teacher fills out and a home version that the parent fills out. Through that, there are four sensory profiles that each patient can have. Before I listened to this podcast I did not know about the strong positive correlation between sensory processing issues and ADD and ADHD. The case study that Lancaster describes is a girl who fit the profile of sensory seeker through the Dunn Sensory Profile and was put on a sensory 'diet' in order to combat this. Every hour and a half to two hours, the child takes a movement break which helps them get back into learning and participation mode. This podcast was extremely interesting to me and loved the end- that with very minor changes to the environment and routine, problems for children with this diagnosis can be mitigated very proactively.