Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
History
Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
Medicine, Military; Military hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Medical care -- United States
The _fourth_ agency, which has been very largely developed recently, but
which has always been used, is the agency of work. This has been applied
in approximately three ways. The first of these is known as diversional
occupation and comprises practically the whole field of what is thought
of by many as occupational therapy. The activities in this field consist
of such work as basket weaving, leather tooling, bead stringing, rug
weaving, and a thousand other similar activities. The object of this
activity is to assist in the re-direction of the patient’s interests, to
turn them away from infantile and regressive objects, and to project
them again into the outer world of reality. Then there is the industrial
type of work therapy in which the patient is carried still further along
the line of personal initiative and given an opportunity to do creative
work which is at the same time useful and which helps him to keep in
form pending the time of his ultimate discharge from the hospital. And
finally, there is the vocational education work, which undertakes
definitely and systematically to give a man training in some specific
direction which he can utilize, after he leaves the institution, and
which will have a definite economic value. For this latter work of
vocational training there is needed such psychological advice and
assistance which will at least prevent the wastage of time and effort
upon unprofitable or impossible tasks, whereas the vocational
psychologist cannot by any rule-of-thumb-tests tell that a man will make
a success in this or that direction, he can tell within reasonable
limits that a certain patient cannot profitably undertake a certain type
of training, that his capacities do not measure up to the minimum
requirements that would make success possible. In this way the work of
vocational education for the neuropsychiatric case can be narrowed down
so that it can be applied more intensively and more effectively to
selected groups that can be reasonably assumed to be good risks.
The _fifth_ agency, which can be advantageously brought to bear upon the
neuropsychiatric case, is the agency for extra-mural social adjustment,
and the personnel consists of the psychiatric social worker. With her
help the patient discharged from the hospital can have the maximum
amount of assistance for relating him again with the problem of
self-support and self-sufficiency. She, through her study of his family
situation, his economic status, his industrial placement and social
contacts can assist to these ends.
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