The Editors’ Showcase: Mental Health Occupational Therapy

Ellie Fossey^1*Justin Newton Scanlan²

• ¹Monash University Department of Occupational Therapy, Frankston, Australia
• ²The University of Sydney School of Health Sciences, Sydney, Australia

The Editors' Showcase: Mental Health Occupational Therapy We are very proud to introduce the first Research Topic to be presented in the Mental Health Occupational Therapy section of Frontiers in Psychiatry. The Mental Health Occupational Therapy journal section is committed to advancing knowledge about how occupational therapists (alongside people with lived and living experience of mental health or emotional challenges, families and carers, and colleagues from other disciplines) contribute to supporting the mental health recovery and wellbeing of individuals, families and populations in diverse cultural and service contexts globally.Just over 10 years ago, we wrote an Editorial together encouraging mental health occupational therapy practitioners and researchers to expand the focus of their work to reflect the breadth of scope of occupational therapy practice (Fossey and Scanlan, 2014). Reflecting on progress since then, we are pleased to see such a diversity of papers presented in this first Research Topic, the Editors' Showcase: Mental Health Occupational Therapy. It really reflects many of the ways in which occupational therapy can support people with diverse challenges to work towards optimal mental health and wellbeing.The nine papers represent contributions to understanding how participation in occupations of daily life and mental health interrelate, and to how occupational therapists promote mental health recovery and wellbeing. The contributors include international and interdisciplinary collaborations and report research undertaken with wide-ranging populations and in diverse contexts, including workplaces, primary care and community mental health services. Broadly, key themes focus on the impact of work conditions on mental health and support for return to work; approaches for exploring and enabling self-determined, meaningful and rewarding forms of activity engagement; We hope that mental health occupational therapists and others across the world engage with this diverse array of research articles and use this knowledge to not only improve occupational therapy practices but also to encourage further research that advances the evidence informing occupationfocused approaches for supporting the health and wellbeing of all individuals and enabling communities to thrive.