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Document Type (Journals)

Original Research

Abstract

In the professional education of mental health practitioners, including occupational therapists, there has been a lack of meaningful inclusion of people labeled with mental illness into curricula, beyond guest speaker panels and presentations. This study explored the experiences of students, faculty, and ‘Experts by Experience’ within a mental health occupational therapy course that incorporated Experts with lived experience as co-facilitators of weekly fieldwork debriefs. The study utilized focus groups and interviews to understand the experiences of students, mental health faculty, and ‘Experts by Experience’. Key themes that emerged from the qualitative data analysis were organized under three broad categories: 1) Students experienced powerful insights, 2) Experts conveyed the complexity of the work, and 3) Faculty grew from co-creating learning experiences with the Experts. This research makes a significant contribution to occupational therapy education by shifting the Expert’s role beyond traditional speaker panels or storytelling. This broader responsibility elevated experiential knowledge into the realm of practice in clinical reasoning by shifting the context of the knowledge from storytelling to support practice reasoning. While this created significant learning opportunities for the students, it also did appear to cause emotional risk for the ‘Experts by Experience’. It is important that efforts to include ‘Experts by Experience’ in curriculum also include sources of support and financial remuneration.

Biography

Tessa Milman, OTD, OTR/L is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Occupational Therapy at the University of Southern California’s Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. Her scholarly interests include experiential knowledge in the classroom, learner-centered pedagogies and mental health.

Sarah Bream, OTD, OTR/L is an Associate Professor of Clinical Occupational Therapy at the University of Southern California’s Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. Her scholarly interests include pedagogy and leadership in occupational therapy education.

Celso Delgado, Jr., OTD, OTR/L, BCMH is an Associate Professor of Clinical Occupational Therapy at the USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. His scholarly interests include mental health and diversity and inclusion.

Erin McIntyre, OTD, OTR/L is an Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences. Her scholarly interests include psychosis, trauma informed pedagogy, community mental health and role emerging fieldwork education.

Tristan Scremin, JD, MFA is a certified peer support specialist and one of the lead peer trainers at Painted Brain. He identifies as a person with schizophrenia and as a mental health advocate.

Leslie Moreno is an ‘Expert by Experience’ with the Chan Division of Occupational Science and Therapy. She is also works as a Crisis Counselor with the Painted Brain.

Maggie Yeo is an ‘Expert by Experience’ with the Chan Division of Occupational Science and Therapy. She also works as a Peer Educator with the Painted Brain.

Deborah B. Pitts, PhD, OTR/L, BCMH, CPRP, FAOTA is a Professor of Clinical Occupational Therapy at the University of Southern California’s Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. Her scholarly interests include psychosis, community mental health/psychiatric rehabilitation practice and workforce development.

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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