Passion is our greatest asset in marketing occupational therapy

It is thrilling to hear that much of the new government policy, such as the National Service Frameworks and the National Health Service Plan, is positive about the role of occupational therapists (Green and Ryan 2000). There should be some relief that our skills are being recognised, yet alarm bells are ringing. This is because influential people such as Matt Muijen, Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, are communicating the opposite message. He has implied that nurses need to be retrained to deliver acute mental health services with an occupational perspective (Muijen 2000). This would suggest that occupational therapy is still misunderstood.