At the Immortelle Children’s Camp in Trinidad,* children play sports and do crafts, like children everywhere. It’s also where, for two weeks every year, these children learn to use their strengths to overcome challenges to engagement in daily occupations, such as play and self-care — thanks in part to Jodi Huntington, MS ’01, PhD ’12, and the Seton Hall occupational therapy (OT) students she supervises there.
A Holistic Way of Thinking By Claire Sykes
The camp, now in its sixth year, is one of many ways she has taken her Seton Hall OT training out into the world. The rest of the time, Huntington works in New York University’s Langone Medical Center as a pre-doctoral counseling psychology intern on the pediatric track. Part of a multidisciplinary OT and PT team, she conducts neuropsychological assessments and evaluations of children’s various injuries and disabilities. “With OT as my foundation, my work blends my knowledge of science, anatomy and neuroanatomy with counseling psychology, extending my OT skills so I can help patients more broadly and holistically,” says Huntington. “The psychological, behavioral and emotional training lets me make more informed assessments and guide treatment.”
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[ The patients] were truly inspiring, because they’ve faced challenges with such strength, grace and dignity.
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The OT education at the School of Health and Medical Sciences is holistic, and affords a systemic view of individuals and organizations. Huntington learned to identify areas of strength and challenge, and to use the strengths to remediate and accommodate the challenges to facilitate engagement in daily occupation. “Both my OT and counseling psychology training asked us to think more broadly,” she says.
“We learned to look at the whole person and how people dynamically interact with other systems around them. The OT program is unified in this over-arching philosophy, which I take with me everywhere.” With a holistic approach to patients’ OT needs, Huntington remains mindful of their spirituality and culture, their views of themselves and their layers of support, and what’s most important to them. “Patients can feel that I’m present and looking at the things that are meaningful to them. If you do this, they know that you care, because you’re not driven by your own agenda, but by their recovery,” she says. “I’m so grateful for the training I had. Seton Hall taught us not only OT skills, but also a way of thinking, which is so important because you can apply that to so many areas. They prepared us not just for a specific job, but for life.” Huntington’s clinical experience is her most memorable, working with people in an in-patient brain-injury unit, as well as a homeless shelter, schools and traditional mental-health settings. “[The patients] were truly inspiring, because they’ve faced challenges with such strength, grace and dignity,” she says, recalling her time with a new mother with a brain injury who was feeding her baby for the first time, and with a homeless woman about to go on a job interview. Whether it’s her clinical-placement patients, the children she sees at Langone or those in Trinidad, Huntington says, “It’s a blessing, and truly amazing, that people allow you into their lives and you can be part of their story of recovery.”
* T he Immortelle Children’s Camp experience is held in Trinidad and is a program established and directed by Laura K. Palmer, Ph.D., chair and director of training
of the Counseling Psychology Program in the Department of Professional Psychology and Family Therapy in the College of Education and Human Services.
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