Judith Kimball co-presents online conference for occupational therapists in the VA heath care system
Judith Kimball, Ph.D., OTR/L, professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy, and Amy Kimball-Carpenter, supervisor of Occupational Therapy at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa, Florida, presented a two-part online conference for occupational therapists in the Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system on June 4-5, 2014.
The conference, titled 鈥淚dentifying and Intervening in the Sensory Processing Aspects of PTSD and MTBI: Help for Our Veterans,鈥 introduced the VA community to the possibility that Sensory Modulation Challenges (SMC) are an undiagnosed part of the diagnoses of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI).
The topic of discussion was how the behaviors seen when military personnel return from deployment can be interpreted not primarily as a psychological issue, but as a sensory processing one, influenced by the physical effect that witnessing traumatic events has on the brain. Interpreting part of the symptoms of PTSD and mTBI from a sensory processing perspective helps veterans to understand and learn to influence their nervous system reactions.
This conference generated a record 109 VA occupational therapists who participated, and was praised by Kimball and Kimball-Carpenter as 鈥渢imely, thorough, and as well put together as anything we have ever had presented.鈥