Content area
Full Text
Since its publication in English, AOI has gone on to be translated into French, German and Hebrew, with work continuing on a Mandarin translation. It has been sold in 16 countries, most commonly in Canada, the United States and Australia. Training workshops for the workbook have been held across Canada. Several positive reviews of the AOI workbook have been published, including in the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal (Kinley, 2010), the British Journal of Occupational Therapy (White, 2011) and the Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy (Walsh, 2012). Reviewers noted the applicability of the workbook to many areas of mental health practice as well as possibilities for its use with other populations who might benefit from increased occupational engagement.
In 2011, the results of a randomized controlled pilot study of AOI were published (Edgelow & Krupa, 2011). The pilot study included 18 participants who had a serious mental illness and a history of extreme activity disengagement and who were receiving services from Assertive Community Treatment teams in southeastern Ontario. The treatment group increased their time spent engaging in activity by 47 minutes per day, on average, after 12 weeks, a statistically significant difference (p=.05). All treatment participants gave positive feedback and stated they would recommend AOI to others with similar challenges; equally positive feedback was received from the occupational therapists who delivered the intervention. Some of the changes in time use seen during the study were...