Mental health in the ways of occupational therapy

DOI:10.15343/0104-7809.200630.1.13

Abstract

In this article we intended to explores the presence of mental health in the ways of Occupational Therapy. For this, we
rethink some historical perspectives of the field, and after that we present the conception of health with which we have worked and the
challenges of the production of health in the contemporary world, when two forms to see life and health coexist. The first one thinks life
and health as biological facts; the second one thinks health as a process directed to the possibility of living a qualified life, full of events
and constituting a peculiar form of existence. Understanding Occupational Therapy as a social practice and a practice of health that use
human beings’ activities as an intervention instrument aiming at the promotion of health and social exchanges, investing in broadening
the horizon of active life of its users, of their capacity to create and to act, of their space of freedom and their relations with the world
and the others, we consider that the conception of health able to follow this practice is not only about the maintenance of biological
life, but also have a deep relationship with quality of life and the ethical question linked to ways of life.