Jun 22, 2026 · 48 min · 12 segments
As part of the 2026 Developmental Disabilities Conference, Kavitha Murthi,Assistant Professor, Rutgers University, discusses occupational therapy for autistic people. Series: "Developmental…
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Kavitha MurthiGuest
Um, today I'm gonna talk about a little bit more about the occupational therapy practice guidelines for autistic individuals.
I'm gonna keep it very clinical focused so that we have a lot of interdisciplinary, uh, audience members here who are interested in the clinical side of things, but also provide some evidence to support our practice.
Before I begin, I want to, um, share my thanks to a couple of people because it takes a village to build this body of work, which spanned over multiple years and, uh, sweat and tears of a lot of people.
She's also a leader in the space who sort of advocated for the practice guidelines in the first place and spearheaded this whole project.
Um, Dr. Patton is a visionary in the OT field as well, and she is pushing to create more neurodiversity affirming occupational therapy practices.
The other authors who helped us with these, uh, guidelines and, um, all their names are listed here.
Um, and other members from the American Occupational Therapy Association who, um, reviewed this work, supported this work, helped organize and mobilize the crowds for this work, so we are very excited and want to thank them as well.
Um, finally, the American Occupational Therapy Association that felt that it is very important to commission these practice guidelines, first of all, and then to sort of make sure that it is neurodiversity affirming and it does what it says it does.
The practice guidelines were commissioned, edited, and funded solely by AOTA without external fiscal support or industry involvement.
Uh, so before I begin, I also want to give a little bit of disclaimers about the language that we use because we believe that language sort of either empowers a community or marginalizes and stigmatizes a community.
And so we wanted to share very, um, clearly that we've used identity-first language in this practice guidelines.
What it means is that identity first language includes terminologies that view autism as an identity, not as a disorder.
And it's now increasingly favored by autistic communities and self-advocates and increasingly adopted by healthcare professionals and researchers.
But at the same time, we respect and recognize that person first language is a choice.
We will use that language which is preferred by the person while specifically addressing them in research or practice.
Um, today I'm gonna talk about a little bit more about the occupational therapy practice guidelines for autistic individuals.
I'm gonna keep it very clinical focused so that we have a lot of interdisciplinary, uh, audience members here who are interested in the clinical side of things, but also provide some evidence to support our practice.
Before I begin, I want to, um, share my thanks to a couple of people because it takes a village to build this body of work, which spanned over multiple years and, uh, sweat and tears of a lot of people.
She's also a leader in the space who sort of advocated for the practice guidelines in the first place and spearheaded this whole project.
Um, Dr. Patton is a visionary in the OT field as well, and she is pushing to create more neurodiversity affirming occupational therapy practices.
The other authors who helped us with these, uh, guidelines and, um, all their names are listed here.
Um, and other members from the American Occupational Therapy Association who, um, reviewed this work, supported this work, helped organize and mobilize the crowds for this work, so we are very excited and want to thank them as well.
Um, finally, the American Occupational Therapy Association that felt that it is very important to commission these practice guidelines, first of all, and then to sort of make sure that it is neurodiversity affirming and it does what it says it does.
The practice guidelines were commissioned, edited, and funded solely by AOTA without external fiscal support or industry involvement.
Uh, so before I begin, I also want to give a little bit of disclaimers about the language that we use because we believe that language sort of either empowers a community or marginalizes and stigmatizes a community.
And so we wanted to share very, um, clearly that we've used identity-first language in this practice guidelines.
What it means is that identity first language includes terminologies that view autism as an identity, not as a disorder.
And it's now increasingly favored by autistic communities and self-advocates and increasingly adopted by healthcare professionals and researchers.
But at the same time, we respect and recognize that person first language is a choice.
We will use that language which is preferred by the person while specifically addressing them in research or practice.
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