Arthritis/Rheumatoid Arthritis

Abstract

Rheumatoid arthritis is a progressive, chronic, and degenerative disease that adversely affects the quality of life of individuals. Depending on the individual's symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, basic and instrumental daily life activities are restricted, and participation of life is adversely affected. Occupational therapy interventions for rheumatoid arthritis rehabilitation include self-management programs (e.g., arthritis self-management program, bone up on arthritis, self-management arthritis treatment physical activity), splinting techniques for rheumatoid arthritis, and vocational rehabilitation. In this chapter, updated information about these approaches is brought together and presented to the reader.This chapter focuses on the rheumatoid arthritis and influences person's life. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) prevalence ranges from 0.3 to 1% of the adult population, and female-to-male prevalence ratio was 4:1 [10,13,14]. It is related to low-and middle-income countries [10,15,16].Rheumatoid arthritis affects people's life balance and their ability to perform work, leisure, self-care, and rest and sleep decreased [17][18][19]. In addition, they lose values of activity for their life so feel anxious and depressed and influence their health related quality of life [20][21][22].Occupational therapist works with not only pain or symptoms management in rheumatoid arthritis but also the prevention of functional limitations and adaptation to lifestyle changes improve emotional state and social participation to maintain independence in daily living activities [11,19,23]. Occupational therapy (OT) interventions especially focus on improving occupational performance which is negatively affected by rheumatoid arthritis. For this reason, occupational therapists use some approaches for improving occupational performance such as using behavioral change approach, energy conservation approach, relax renovation and pain control, fatigue management, maintain ındependence, adaptive device, and home adaptations in rheumatoid arthritis [9,24].