Therapeutic Recreation - Behavioral Health
Therapeutic Recreation plays an important role on the behavioral health units. Therapeutic intervention techniques include: coping skills, anger management, self-awareness, stress management, problem solving, communication, and leisure education/leisure awareness.
Adult
Coping Sessions
Coping sessions help patients use various coping strategies to reduce anger, hostility, physical, emotional, and verbal abuse. It is through coping strategies and techniques that individuals can find positive alternatives to managing their level of stress and help eliminate stressors or replace stressors with positive, healthy alternatives.
Self Awareness
Self-awareness techniques help the patient to identify feelings, wants, needs, and behaviors in order to enable each individual to cope with life. It is through self-awareness interventions that the patient is able to gain greater knowledge about their thoughts, which may be triggering negative behavior, and help them better cope with each situation that arises.
Problem Solving
Problem solving includes a wide variety of therapeutic intervention and techniques. Goal setting is just one of the many aspects of problem solving (brainstorming, pros vs. cons, questions and solutions, negative vs. positive, rationalization, reality vs. thought distortion, etc.). Goal setting is very important and can contribute to the success of managing an individual's stress level, depressive state, etc. Goal setting can enhance self-confidence, self-awareness, improves performance, and can increase motivation.
Recreation Participation
Recreation Participation is a group therapy session introduced to encourage the patient to choose a leisure activity as well as offer a relaxed setting to talk with a therapist. Patients are at ease communicating their feeling with the CTRS in this minimally structured group. Examples of activities to choose from include: cards, board games, crafts, table games, and art.
Children And Adolescent
Coping Sessions
The Recreation therapist helps patients cope with stressors by teaching them various techniques to help reduce or eliminate negative outcomes. Through such coping mechanisms, patients have the ability to take a situation and produce positive resolutions.
Self Awareness
Self-Awareness techniques allow patients the opportunity to grow and expand on their personal self. Patients are able to identify their wants, needs, desires, beliefs, and behaviors in order to better cope with life. Patients are able to have greater knowledge about themselves and gain insight into reasons for negative behavior and begin turning negative behavior into positive behavior.
Problem Solving
Problem solving includes a wide variety of therapeutic recreation techniques, one of the key techniques being goal setting. Through goals and objectives, patients are able to consciously become aware of positive outcomes. Whether it is pros vs. cons or negative vs. positive, recreation therapists help patients become more aware of possible situational outcomes (both positive and negative) before the action can be carried out. Through problem solving, patients will be able to apply positive solutions to diminish potentially negative outcomes.
Anger Management
Therapeutic intervention techniques help patients understand that since they do not possess the power to eliminate or change those that make them angry or avoid every situation that causes them stress, they can, however, learn to control the actions they take. Learning how to channel one's anger constructively is just one aspect of therapeutic intervention techniques for anger management.