Student Blog
What are OS/OT?

Spring 2019 ⟩
April 3, 2019, by Evan

What are OS/OT?

It’s unbelievable that my leadership capstone class, which meets every Monday at 1pm, represents the last opportunity my entire MA-II class will have to be together in one room. It seems like only yesterday that we were all meeting each other for the first time! These two years have just flown by. To be honest, at the time I entered grad school I was feeling very nervous about my choice to come back to school and pursue a second career. Now I feel so good about that decision, and grateful that the experience has surpassed my expectations. Simply put, I’ve met some of the best people I’ve ever known here in the USC Chan Division. I have learned so very much. Not only do I feel ready and competent to move on to an OTD residency at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, but the base of knowledge and experience I have gained through this curriculum will serve me as a person, father, and husband for the rest of my life. Thanks sincerely to my student colleagues and every professor and staff member that has made this journey special for us. It’s an amazing gift to be in a position where you genuinely feel you can help people.

And to those of you who were wondering if it is really possible to have kids in Grad School, I’m happy to report that my second child was born in December! She is my soulmate. Sure, these last few months have been busy. It’s taken a lot of hard work and determination to get everything on the list done each day. But with the sincere support of this department, which really means the world to me, I’ve been able to stay on course.

So all of you who might be wondering if a return to grad school might just be too much, I’m here to tell you it’s possible! Keep the faith, work hard, and good things will happen. I believe this with all my heart.

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Reflections From My Residency: Using the human animal bond therapeutically ⟩
April 2, 2019, by Antonietta

What are OS/OT?

As I discussed in the previous blog, humans’ perception of our emotional bond with animals started being examined and debated in the mid 1700s. But when did we start to use this bond therapeutically? The earliest report is at the York Retreat, an asylum for the mentally ill, in England 1792 where the inhabitants cared for rabbits and chickens (Netting, Wilson, & New, 1987). This therapeutic strategy took quite a bit longer to make its way to the United States, but starting in the 1940s at Pawling Air Force Convalescent Hospital, veterans were encouraged to work with farm animals as part of their recovery. By the 1970s dogs became a common tool in therapeutic settings: 48% of institutes incorporated them in some way per an American Humane Education Society report. Animals are now well-established as therapeutic partners, used by many disciplines and in variety of ways. But why? History has moved on from so many other treatments of the past. Plunge baths from the 1700s aren’t used anymore and lobotomies — which were very popular in the 1950s — are considered repugnant and deemed unethical. But animal assisted therapy has gotten stronger, more common, and better supported by research. What makes it so effective? Is it the emotional bond between human and animal?

Curious about this therapeutic bond and interested in the power of images to shed light on relationships, my father Carmine, organized a field study at The Children’s Ranch. He came every Friday afternoon for a semester to observe the sessions and sketch what he was seeing. He wanted to know if he could capture the mystery of this therapeutic bond in a visual form: painting.

For me as a therapist, it was an interesting experience to have this observer participating in our sessions, but I was curious what it was like for him. Since he’s my dad it was easy to get an interview!

How did you decide how much time you would spend at The Ranch?

“That decision depended on a specific rule I set for myself: my documentation would not employ any cameras; all my observations would be drawn by hand. Using a camera would have sped up the work, but it also would have had a few undesirable side effects.

• Cameras reduce the actual amount of time you need to spend on the ground and therefore can lead to a false illusion of understanding the authentic experience.
• Cameras automatically create a default composition which is hard to modify. In the process, they can eliminate key parts of an experience.
• Cameras make people pose! That was something I wanted to avoid. To see genuine moments, I needed to be integrated as part of the team so that everyone was relaxed and acting naturally.

I needed to spend time on the ground to gather visual data, build relationships slowly, accrue insight, and become a participant. It took about 4 months of consistent visits to get to that point, but I didn’t know that in advance”

What were some of the challenges you encountered?

“One challenge was developing a sketch kit that was completely mobile. Since sessions at the Ranch move around a lot, I needed to be agile and flexible. In a way, I was a member of the team and didn’t want anything to be slowing me down while we transitioned from the chicken coop to the barn. So, every piece of equipment had to be portable and always ready-to-go.

A second challenge was that children are curious, and my tools often piqued their interest. The kids wanted to play with them and once they saw some of the sketches, there was a risk they would be distracted from the work they were doing with the therapist. I had to find the line between engaging them and building our relationship, and redirecting them back to the focus of their time at the Ranch, which was the caring for the animals.

However, the fact that the kids were conscious of being drawn was significant in another way. I’m interested in how these sketches, and eventually the finished oil paintings, might serve as a mechanism for self-reflection for the children. I believe that how we picture ourselves is a big part of our identity formation. When the paintings are exhibited at my studio later this year and everyone is invited to the opening, I am curious how the children and their families will respond to visualizations of themselves participating in really unique and meaningful experiences.”

Talk about your trip to visit me at Skyline Therapy Services in Albuquerque.

“You and I had talked a lot about the differences between Animal Assisted Therapy and Hippotherapy, but it wasn’t until I got to see both that I really understood. Your work at the Ranch grows out of a relationship you foster between the children and the animals. The activities are structured around caring for the animals’ needs and understanding their well-being, as a way for the child to develop their own sense of self, autonomy, and identity as well as any other goals you are working on. From a visual point of view, that kind of relationship is subtle and elusive.

At Skyline, where Hippotherapy is the main treatment tool, it is not about the emotional bond, but the relationship between bodies. For an artist, that kind of spatial relationship is more visible and more direct; you you don’t need to visualize a mood, or a state of mind. With Hippotherapy, it much more physically evident how the therapists are helping and how the child’s body changes before and after their session.”

Now that you have finished your field work and are starting on the oil paintings, do you think you have achieved your goal of visualizing the bond?

“After I finished amassing the sketches my next big challenge was to create compositions for the paintings. These were based not just on the drawings, but also my memory and a kind of intuition that had been created by everything I had seen. The compositions were also determined by basic pictorial conventions and requirements. I know that amounts to a lot of variables. My concern as an artist is that what results might be an interesting picture, but not real documentation. I guess the critical test will be when the kids, therapists, and families see and judge for themselves.”

When I look at the paintings, I see what looks like my treatment sessions but also feel what it is like the be at the Ranch. It is amazing to see a visual image of that sense of calm when a child with ADHD sits quietly with the rabbits, because that is what makes them feel happy and “green.” It is incredible to see in a permanent form, the fleeting connection between a child and horse that is so strong it can get a kid out of her home despite immense rigidity. I was happy to have an extra member of our team when my dad was visiting the Ranch and I’m very excited to see what my students think of these pictures.

Netting, F. E., Wilson, C. C., & New, J. C. (1987). The human-animal bond: Implications for practice. Social Work, 32(1), 60–64. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/32.1.60

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So . . . What Is OT? ⟩
February 21, 2019, by Jessica P.

What are OS/OT?

So you like help people find jobs? Is it basically the same thing as physical therapy? These are just two of the questions you may be hearing a lot when you tell people that you are studying occupational therapy. As relatively youthful profession, I mean we are only 102 years old, occupational therapy is not always well known and represented in society or healthcare professions. Many people make assumptions about what we as OTs do and as an OT student I love that I get a chance to teach others about this amazing profession and the role that it can play in so many people’s lives.

Over the years, I have gotten pretty good at my “OT elevator pitch.” This is just a quick way to describe occupational therapy to someone who may have never even heard of the profession before. In one of our courses, OT 523: Communication Skills for Effective Practice, we even had the opportunity to develop our elevator pitches and get feedback from classmates. Being able to confidently share about my profession allows me to explain the unique occupational therapy lens, advocate for my future patients on why they may need OT, and educate others on a profession they may be interested in pursuing.

So . . . what is OT?

Occupational therapy is a holistic, healthcare profession which helps people of all ages and abilities do the things they need to do and want to do in their day to day lives. An occupation is not just your job, it is anything you do that occupies your time.

Across the lifespan, our occupations will obviously look different. When I was 2 months old, my main occupations were sleeping and eating. Now at 22, my occupations look very different — attending class, hanging out with friends, and working. As I get older, my occupations will again shift and look different. Occupational therapists come in when there is something that prevents you from living your life to the fullest, the way you want to. This could be from anything, such as a mental illness or physical disability. 

So . . . where do OTs work?

The short answer to this is OTs work pretty much everywhere. Occupational therapists can be found working in hospitals, private clinics, schools, home health, corporations, community centers, psychiatric hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, university medical and research centers . . . and more!

After years of explaining to people that I want to be an occupational therapist, I’ve found it’s best to make it relatable to them. Ask someone “What is your favorite thing to do?” and “How would you feel if you could no longer do this?” Voila! That is where occupational therapy will come in.

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Reflections From My Residency: When did we realize that humans and animals have an emotional bond? ⟩
February 12, 2019, by Antonietta

What are OS/OT?

In today’s culture, where people dress their dogs up for Halloween and get baby strollers for their cats, this may seem like a silly question . . . but when did we realize that humans can have an emotional bond with animals? The debate in “pop culture” can be traced back to 1765 when Jean-Baptiste Greuze completed an intricate portrait in oil paints of a young woman and a dead bird (see below). Each component of this painting isn’t odd for the time period, but what stirred the pot was the young woman’s expression. You can see she looks devastated. From our modern perspective, it is obvious this because her darling pet bird died, but in the mid 1700s it was not part of the zeitgeist to think animals were something you could have an emotional bond with. Jean-Baptiste Greuze observed the people around him and started to challenge this assumption with his painting.

This conversation swirled around for about a hundred years and in 1890 Paul Meyerheim added to the next iteration. He painted “The Jealous Lioness” (see below). His challenge was not only that humans and animals can have an emotional bond, but that animals actually have their own emotions. And not just simple emotions like happiness and boredom, but complex ones like jealousy. This painting illustrates the beginning of the big shift to the modern perspective of how we think about animals.

Ok, so how do I know all of this? It started one night during a conversation over dinner with my dad. I was feeling pretty beat from work and Papa asked me about my day. We had had a student at The Children’s Ranch who was struggling. He loved our animals but was not able to keep his body calm and safe around them. We had been using a tool with him, a modified zones of regulation meter, to check in with how he was feeling. It was also intended to teach him how to observe our horses and chickens to see how they were feeling. I’d brought home one of our pocket sized, laminated meters by accident and so I pulled it out and showed my dad (see below). He looked quizzical . . . “but if you’re starting the discussion with the animal’s emotions, then why are the faces emoji’s? Why not have drawings of what the horses actually look like when their emotions change?”

A project was born! My dad (Carmine Iannaccone) is an artist and professor in the Master of Fine Art program at Claremont Graduate University. He is the one who taught me about the two paintings in the beginning of this blog because visual culture is something he studies and is a theme he has been creating artwork around for years. He has this amazing ability to connect almost anything to visual culture, which makes our conversations fascinating and rich. So anyways, the project: a meter which features horses faces showing the different zones. Papa did the drawings, I collated and colored them in Photoshop and now we have a tool which is even more effective than the original (see below).  Because humans undoubtedly do have a bond with animals, children are immediately fascinated by the horse meter. When I first show them the little card, they frequently take it right out of my hand to stare at the pictures . . . and then the questions about our horses start rolling in:

“What makes Dove sad?”
“How can I make Storm happy?”
“How can you tell that Pepper is scared?”
“Why is Cody so worried?”

There is always buy-in. The meter flows naturally into and out of our conversations. It is a tool we use together to teach and learn about our animal companions. This collaboration with my dad continued. Inspired by the work of Greuze and Meyerheim (the painters I discussed above), he came to the Ranch every Friday for a semester . . . but more about that in my next post!

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Winter Break Occupations ⟩
January 18, 2019, by Jessica P.

School/Life Balance What are OS/OT?

After a month long winter break, I am finally back on campus! Coming back for spring semester I always feel refreshed and excited after having some time off. The past few weeks I’ve found time to relax with family, catch up with friends, and even re-engage in some of my favorite, meaningful occupations.

I was able to spend time volunteering with PressFriends, an organization I have been involved with since I was in high school. As a mentor, I get to go to elementary schools in the Los Angeles area and help them develop after school newspaper programs.

My mom, sister, and I spent time visiting Georgia for the first time.

I even was able to engage in meaningful occupations while fulfilling the not so fun occupation of jury duty. During our long lunch breaks from the courthouse, I explored the wonderful food Downtown LA has to offer. I was a frequent customer at Grand Central Market where you can you can pretty much find any type of food you could ever want.

And of course, my favorite occupation of all — spending time with my dogs.

I know that this next (and my last!!) semester is going to fly by and I can’t wait for all of the adventures to come!

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