The Concept of Occupation Evolution since 1975

One of the most crucial aspects of modern social life is the idea occupational has evolved into a well-developed system. However, it must be marked that the concept developed in a rather peculiar way, which predetermined its present state. Despite the popular image of occupation, this is far from being merely a profession or a job taken by the given person. Because of its rapid development in the XXI century, the occupation has quite a number of shapes in the modern world. Because of the ideas that K. Ann Evans offered to the world of social science, occupation has become the measure of people’s social status. Thus, after Evans (1987) defined occupation as “the active or “doing” process of a person engaged in goal-directed, intrinsically gratifying, and culturally appropriate activity”, the idea of what makes human activity gave a basis for the idea of occupational therapy.

Starting with a theory, the idea of occupation and occupational therapy evolved rapidly in the 1970ies. However, this was only the rise of the occupational theory. Further on, the first models like MOHO emerged, which allowed to development of a specific model for the enabled as the computer era began in the 1990ies. With help of the abovementioned approaches, such non-traditional occupations as Foster Care began to appear in the 2000ies, which allows us to suggest that the further development of occupational therapy will help the enabled integrate into the society. At present, the American Occupation Therapy Association seems to have taken the lead over the entire sphere of occupational therapy, which allows us to suppose that the further development of the therapy will be aimed at helping the enabled people to integrate into the modern society and feel that they belong here.