Session reflection- Lynn Farley- empowering parents with mental illness: interventions for enhanced parenting engagement, first block. 

This session talked about how to support parents with mental illness thru skilled interventions, focused on various areas of parenting and self-care habits. Lynn talked about how she was unable to find many studies on this topic, so she created a workbook to support parents with mental illness, with the ability to be used wither one on one or in group sessions. These are meant to be done during sessions with a health care professional. The professional doesn't have to specifically be an OTP, but she created the intervention using occupational therapy standards and techniques, so will probably be commonly used in occupational therapy settings.  

This workbook focuses on supporting better mental health in the parent as well as helping them to improve their parenting techniques to raise emotionally health children by use of various different parenting styles. They have many different sections in the workbook including talking to your kids about mental health, family activities, self-care and rejuvenation, and journaling.  

My 5 takeaways from this session were different ways that parents can better their mental health, how they can support good mental health in their children, how we need to do more research on this topic, how overlooked this population is, and how there are people trying to change this. This will impact my future career because I am planning on going into pediatrics, or potentially pediatric mental health. It will be important for me to know how I can support the parents of any children that I work with effectively to promote better outcomes for the whole family.  

Poster session reflection- Sensory Compression Gloves 

I did my poster presentation on the sensory compression gloves that I made for my assistive device project last semester. They are a long pair of gloves that give a specific amount of compression through the arms and hands. They also have an opening at the wrist that allows you to easily take the glove portion on or off without having to remove the sleeve portion.  

I was nervous to present this project in front of so many people that I don't know, but once I presented a few times I started to relax. I think that this was beneficial to me because it helped me to confront my social anxiety around talking to people that I don't know, which will be a skill that I will use a lot in my future career.  

I think that overall, my presentation went really well. I noticed that people who don't work with or understand sensory processing disorders weren't really impressed with my gloves, and did not really understand the reasoning behind it. On the other hand, any one who did work with people with a sensory processing disorder, especially people who work in pediatric settings thought that my gloves were awesome, and we talked about how needed they are.  

I think that I would be willing to present on this again at some point in the future. I think that discussing my project with more people has changed my mind on not trying to distribute my creation, and if I can figure out how to do it, I would love to present on them again! 

New graduate panel 

I learned a lot from the new graduate panel this year. I found it helpful to hear about what it is like to search for jobs in the current market, as well as what sort of things I should be doing to support myself in my future job search.  

I also found it helpful to hear their suggestions on how to prepare for the NBCOT. I learned a lot about study packs, suggested study times, and tips for taking it in the testing center. I really liked how they gave us tips like chewing gum, listening to music while studying, and doing my best to not over study.  

It was also beneficial to hear about what the first year of being in the workforce is like, because it feels like I am better prepared to enter the workforce now.