The Domain of Concern of Swedish Occupational Therapists Working in Psychiatric Care

As a consequence of the development of psychiatric care in Sweden, occupational therapists have adapted their roles to changing practice settings. The aim of this study was to investigate the domain of concern of occupational therapists in psychiatric care, operationalized as perceived responsibilities. Furthermore, the relationships of the domain of concern to underlying theories and models, clinical supervision, intervention strategies, and organization of the care were investigated. Data were collected by a mail questionnaire to occupational therapists working in psychiatric care with a response rate of 67%, in all 334 occupational therapists. A factor analysis revealed six domain-of-concern areas. The three most prominent factors were ADL, housing and leisure, Psychosocial dysfunction, and Work and studies, which confirmed that occupational therapists' focus is on the patient's occupational performance skills as well as the environment that supports or hinders the patient's performance. The occupational therapists were using a broad range of underlying theories and models as well as intervention strategies and several relationships to domain-of-concern factors were found. This study gave an overall view of the occupational therapists' domain of concern, but there is also need for a more detailed and thorough understanding of how occupational therapists define their domain of concern, which calls for more qualitatively oriented in-depth studies.