Manualized Occupational Therapy Intervention for Children and Adolescents with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Abstract

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children can cause physiological and psychological reactions that can lead to impaired executive functioning and self-regulation skills that interfere with occupational engagement. Occupational Therapy (OT) utilizes an occupational perspective to treat children with PTSD. However, there is an absence of a manualized OT intervention in the literature that incorporates an occupation-based approach, utilizes graded occupation as the primary intervention, and tracks treatment progress and outcomes. The purpose of this capstone project was to create a manualized OT intervention protocol for OT practitioners to treat children with PTSD guided by the model of human occupation and evidenced-based principles of behavioral activation therapy. The manualized OT intervention was created in two parts. Part one includes five sections of background information for OT practitioners to inform efficient implementation of the protocol. Part two includes 13 treatment sessions that incorporate the essential components of the OT process to treat children with PTSD. The manualized OT treatment protocol will allow OT practitioners to consistently treat children with PTSD and to study the efficacy of the protocol.