Recreational therapy
therapy by enhancement of physical, cognitive, emotional and social skills so an individual may participate in chosen activities
Recreational therapy or therapeutic recreation (TR) is a systematic process that utilizes recreation, leisure, and other activities as interventions to address the assessed needs of individuals with illnesses and/or disabling conditions, as a means to psychological and physical health, recovery and well-being. Recreational therapy may also be simply referred to as recreation therapy, but in short, it is the utilization and enhancement of leisure.
The work of recreational therapists differs from other professionals on the basis of using leisure activities alone to meet well-being goals, they work with clients to enhance motor, social and cognitive functioning, build confidence, develop coping skills, and integrate skills learned in treatment settings into community settings. Intervention areas vary widely and are based upon enjoyable and rewarding interests of the client. Examples of intervention modalities include creative arts (e.g., crafts, music, dance, drama, among others), games, sports like adventure programming, exercises like dance/movement, and skill enhancement activities (Motor, locomotion, sensory, cognition, communication, and behavior).
"Today, the United States Department of Labor projects that there are over 19,000 recreational therapists in the United States. As of January 2023, there are 19,278 professionals who hold active, inactive, or eligible for re-entry status on the NCTRC registry. The CTRS credential is the most professionally advanced credential for the field of therapeutic recreation."
There are four approaches in therapeutic recreation:
Recreation services: Providing recreation services to people with disabilities for experiencing leisure and its benefits, often this takes a rehabilitation tone in approach for helping clients to reach an optimal level of health and well-being.
Therapeutic approach: The purpose of this approach is curative in nature. It attempts to lessen and ameliorate the effects of illness' and disabilities, it also can be prescriptive for improving certain functional capacities.
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This entry incorporates text from “Recreational therapy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.