What is Recreation Therapy?

Throughout my undergraduate degree, when people asked what I was studying and I replied "Therapeutic Recreation," the comments such as "Oh I need to go relax on the beach" or "I could sure use a vacation" were plenteous. Sadly, this is not necessarily what Therapeutic Recreation, or Recreation Therapy fully is. I don't go to the beach with clients all the time. In fact, I never have.

Here is one picture I did take from the beach this year though.

Wellington, NZ 2024

Simply put, Recreation Therapy (RT) is the purposeful use of any healthy leisure/recreation activity to improve quality of life, whether socially, emotionally, intellectually, physically, or spiritually. This may seem like, yes, this is going to the beach. However, there is more to it than that. This post will include more but will again only be some of what is the job of a Recreation Therapist. There will be more posts about what it looks like to be a Recreation Therapist.

In my personal experience as a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist (CTRS) (someone who is certified to provide RT, I work mostly in mental healthcare, so I use activities/recreation options to help patients develop skills that they need in their mental health therapy. I usually run groups with a pre-determined number of people (usually considered homes, units, or wards in the mental healthcare facilities) where I do an activity and then process (ask questions that proceed a therapeutic response) about the skills that the patients used to complete the task and any that they may need to improve to complete the task better in the future. And I ask how that applies to their mental health journey. And that is extremely simply put. That is just barely scratching the surface.

In general, Recreation Therapists' jobs can be boiled into a few categories. Most RTs will know about the "APIE" process. APIE stands for Assessment, Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation. We assess patients/clients to understand what therapeutic needs they have. This could be physical, emotional, intellectual, etc. Once we have assessed our clientele, we plan their treatment. This includes creating goals and objectives, deciding on recreation/activities that will help meet those goals, planning the outings or groups, etc. Implementation is the actual doing of the activities and therapeutic processing. This can look like rappelling and asking the patient how they experienced trust in others and in themselves. This can also look like teaching a client how to access bus route information and then giving them an assignment to create a route on their own to get to a dentist appointment. The tasks and implementation vary by clientele, facility type, and specific goals of the individual. Lastly, we evaluate the activity. Did it address the goals? What were some issues that occurred that need to be changed for the future? And, part of evaluation is documenting the progress of the patient. Anyone in healthcare knows that documentation is pertinent and is never done.

The National Council for Therapeutic Recreation Certification (NCTRC) is the organization in charge of providing testing and recertifying for CTRSs. They have a job analysis done in 2021 that includes the APIE process and a few areas of professionalism that are required by the job. Their study can be accessed here.

For more information, feel free to ask questions in the comments. I will do my best to answer those questions in a timely manner. And I will continue to write posts about the experience of a recreation therapist.