Occupational Therapy in Community Mental Health Teams: A Continuing Dilemma? Role Theory Offers an Explanation

Occupational therapists working in community mental health teams (CMHTs) experience the difficulty of balancing the expectations of their profession with those of the team, their employers, the purchasers and the client group within the wider context of health care. This paper uses role theory as a framework to examine why occupational therapists may perceive threats to their professional identity and experience pressure to conform to the defined CMHT ‘role set’. It examines the concepts of role definition, role signs, role ambiguity, role incompatibility and role conflict and the resulting role stress.

Occupational therapists need to identify their role problems and either develop strategies to resolve them or suffer role strain. Conformity to the expectations of the role set may mean becoming less effective and less able to distinguish their role from that of the other members of the CMHT. This will have very real consequences for the future of occupational therapy within both CMHTs and the wider context of health care.