Crafting a Chronic Pain Management Curriculum for the Forensic Inpatient Psychiatric Population

Participants will learn more about the state of chronic pain management with the inpatient psych population, in the context of a large state hospital dedicated to inpatient psychiatric treatment. We will discuss some of the challenges that this particular populations faces, both the people themselves and the challenges an OT must overcome to create an effective treatment plan given restrictions of setting, safety and of course, serious mental illness. We will answer such questions as 1) How to you distill complex pain neuroscience education into subject matter that is appropriate for a range of Allen cognitive levels? 2) how do you effectively manage delusions/hallucinations while still providing affirming, evidence based care? 3) what unique challenge are present in the inpatient forensic psychiatric population, and how do we work around these? 4) how was the curriculum structured, and why was it based on a series of the senses? 5) what does successful integration look like for this population?

Additionally, if granted the proper time slot, participants will have a change to engage in some of the treatments and games used for this curriculum. Yoga was heavily incorporated as a heavily evidence based tool to manage chronic pain, as were games that explored the use of each sense and ultimately overall successfully integrated chronic pain management concepts for our patients.

Target Audience: Occupational therapists, occupational therapy assistants, occupational therapy students

Presented by: Katy Owens, OTR/L