Take Charge of Your Health Journey With Confidence and Support
Your health challenges don't have to define your life—we'll help you find balance.
Managing your physical health or a chronic illness can feel overwhelming, with daily responsibilities piling up on top of your symptoms.
Does this sound familiar?
I feel like my physical health challenges are isolating me from the things I care about.
Practical Tools to Manage Your Health and Reclaim Your Life
Together, we’ll work to make your health management more manageable, helping you regain control and focus on what matters most to you. Our sessions focus on building systems to organize medications, track appointments, and balance your energy for daily activities.
We help you build systems for better health
We’ll also explore ways to adapt your routines and surroundings to reduce the impact of health challenges while maintaining a sense of independence and fulfillment.
We help you see that your health doesn’t have to define your limits—let’s create a life where you feel in control
How Mental Health Occupational Therapy can Help:
Supporting you in managing medications, healthcare appointments, and treatment plans effectively.
Mental Health Occupational Therapy Helps You Thrive In All Parts of Your Life
We support individuals across multiple areas, including:
Mental health occupational therapy addresses how emotional and psychological well-being affects daily functioning. Rather than focusing solely on symptoms, it helps people build practical skills for managing routines, relationships, self-care, and meaningful activities.
For people managing physical health conditions or chronic illness, mental health often becomes intertwined with the physical experience. Anxiety about symptoms, grief over lost abilities, depression from ongoing limitations, or difficulty adjusting all impact daily life.
OT helps with mental health by focusing on what you do every day and how mental health challenges affect those activities. Instead of just talking about feelings, OT helps you build systems, routines, and adaptive strategies.
This might include:
Occupational therapy for chronic illness addresses the functional impact of ongoing health conditions on daily life. Chronic illness often affects energy, mobility, cognition, pain levels, and emotional regulation.
OT helps you adapt by:
OT supports physical health by addressing how physical conditions affect daily activities and building practical strategies to improve function.
This includes:
A mental health occupational therapist assesses how mental health symptoms affect your ability to function and works with you to build practical skills and systems.
Common interventions include:
OT is used for chronic illness because chronic conditions affect more than just medical symptoms. They impact daily functioning, independence, roles, relationships, and quality of life.
Unlike medical treatment that targets the illness itself, OT focuses on how you live with the illness through sustainable routines, environmental adaptations, and preventing functional decline.
Mental health and physical health are deeply interconnected. Living with chronic illness often triggers anxiety, depression, grief, or adjustment difficulties.
These mental health concerns can:
OT helps with daily functioning by identifying what’s getting in the way and building practical strategies to work around or through those barriers.
This includes:
The length depends on your goals, the complexity of challenges, and how quickly you build new skills. Some see meaningful improvements within weeks or months, while others benefit from longer-term support.
The focus is on building skills you can use independently, so therapy doesn’t continue indefinitely. We check in regularly about progress.
You know OT is working when you notice improvements in daily functioning, even if symptoms haven’t completely resolved:
Anyone whose mental health is affecting their ability to function in daily life may benefit, including people experiencing:
Anyone living with a chronic illness that affects daily functioning can benefit, including people with:
Consider OT when emotional or psychological challenges affect your ability to manage daily activities, maintain routines, or participate in work or social roles.
Signs include:
Yes. Research consistently shows OT can improve mental health outcomes by addressing functional impairments, building coping skills, and helping people re-engage in meaningful activities.
OT is particularly effective for anxiety, depression, adjustment disorders, and mental health challenges related to chronic illness or trauma. The hands-on, practical nature makes it a good fit for people who need concrete strategies.
Yes. OT improves quality of life by helping you adapt to limitations, conserve energy, manage symptoms, and maintain participation in activities that matter to you. Even when the illness can’t be cured, OT helps you live as fully and independently as possible.
This includes developing sustainable routines, adapting your environment, building strategies for flare-ups, and preventing further functional decline.
We accept:
We provide home, community-based, and virtual sessions throughout Portland, OR. We do not offer in-office services. Sessions take place in your home, in the community, or online via a secure video platform.
Yes. We offer virtual OT sessions via a secure video platform for clients throughout Portland and Oregon. Online sessions work well for people with mobility limitations, transportation challenges, or who prefer to meet from home.
We do not offer in-office services. Instead, we provide home-based, community-based, and virtual OT sessions. This approach allows us to work with you in the environments where you actually live.
If you’re searching for OT for physical health and chronic illness near you in Portland, we serve clients throughout the Portland Metro Area, Greater Portland, and Portland Suburbs. Whether you’re near Laurelhurst Park, climbing the paths at Mount Tabor Park, walking through the Portland Japanese Garden, spending time at Sellwood Riverfront Park, or browsing Powell’s City of Books, we bring OT support directly to where you are.
OT differs from traditional mental health supports like psychotherapy in its focus on practical, functional outcomes. While therapy addresses thoughts, feelings, and relational patterns, OT focuses on helping you do what you need and want to do in daily life.
Many people benefit from both OT and therapy simultaneously. Therapy helps you understand and process emotions, while OT helps you build the systems and skills to function better.
OT improves independence and routines by identifying what’s breaking down in your current systems and building sustainable strategies:
Yes. OT is highly effective for helping adults manage chronic illness and physical health concerns. We work with adults navigating daily activities while managing ongoing health challenges.
Transition-age adults facing new diagnoses or ongoing conditions benefit from OT support as they build independence, establish routines, and adapt to life changes while managing their health.
Yes. Chronic illness can heighten sensory sensitivities or create sensory processing challenges. OT helps build practical skills and routines to manage sensory overwhelm while maintaining daily living skills.
We use sensory integration strategies to help you:
Yes. Managing chronic illness requires significant executive functioning—tracking appointments, medications, symptoms, and self-care. When ADHD or attention challenges are present, this becomes even more difficult. OT helps build the skills needed to manage both.
We help with executive functioning by:
OT is effective for managing chronic pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and other conditions that affect energy, mobility, and daily function. We focus on pacing, energy conservation, and sustainable routines.
We also support people with neurological conditions like Parkinson’s disease, brain injury, stroke, MS, and other progressive or acquired conditions. The focus is on maintaining function, adapting to changes, and developing practical strategies for ongoing challenges.
Mental health conditions like anxiety or depression often co-occur with chronic illness. OT addresses how these conditions interact by supporting emotional regulation, trauma recovery, and rebuilding meaningful activities alongside physical health management.
Mental health occupational therapists are licensed occupational therapists (OTR/L) who have completed specialized training in mental health practice. This includes graduate education in occupational therapy, clinical fieldwork, and national board certification.
Our clinical staff includes licensed occupational therapists with expertise in mental health, chronic illness, and community-based care. Dr. Elizabeth Martin, OTD, OTR/L, serves as clinical director and brings extensive experience in mental health occupational therapy.
Each personalized treatment plan is built around your specific health challenges, goals, and daily life context. We don’t use a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, we assess what’s working, what’s not, and build sustainable strategies together.
Our treatment approach centers on holistic community therapy—we work with you in your home and community, not in a clinic. This allows us to provide comprehensive care that addresses real-world challenges and helps you re-engage in meaningful activities that matter to you.
Traditional therapy focuses on processing emotions, exploring thoughts, and building insight. Mental health occupational therapy focuses on doing—helping you function better in daily life despite mental or physical health concerns.
OT addresses unique challenges that traditional talk therapy often doesn’t:
Please note – we only offer home, community-based, and virtual sessions. We do not provide in-office services.
