Introduction: Differences in sensory processing were linked to a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) before its inclusion as a core characteristic in the revised DSM-V. Yet, research focused on sensory processing and meaningful participation of children and youth with ASD remains relatively scarce. Although refinement of the International Classification of Functioning and Disability (ICF) relies on first-person accounts, longitudinal studies that foreground sensory experiences and its impact on involvement in a life situation from first-person perspectives are largely missing from this body of research.Objectives: In this sub-study, we drew from a longitudinal participatory research project consisting of two separately funded studies with children and youth with ASD and their families between 2014 and 2021. The participatory project used photovoice (PV) methods to identify the primary concerns related to socio-spatial exclusion (PV-1) and the action steps needed to redress them (PV-2). The objective of this sub-study was to understand what really mattered to children with autism, their parents, autistic youth and an adult mentor to consider how their experiential knowledge could deepen understanding of meaningful participation.Materials and Methods: We used an overarching narrative phenomenological and aesthetic theoretical framework to focus data analysis on the bodily sensing experiences related to significant moments or events, followed by an inductive thematic analysis of what mattered about those moments.Results: The topical areas of concern that emerged from analyses were: (1) the relationship between sensory experiences and mental health (motion madness); (2) the indivisibility or layering of sensory and social experiences (squishing and squeezing); (3) the impact when “tricks” to stay involved are categorically misunderstood (When you don’t respond in the correct way), and (4) how care and consideration of others can lead to innovative solutions for inclusion (I can’t be the only one). Listening to the bodily-sensing experiences of children with ASD, autistic youth and adults, and their families in their own terms has implications for remapping the ICF and envisioning sensory curb-cuts to access, initiate and sustain occupational participation for all.

Since 2007, the Mental Health Commission of Canada has worked collaboratively across all provinces to publish a framework and strategy for recovery and well-being. This federal document is now mandated as policy for implementation between 2012 and 2017. The proposed strategies have been written into provincial health plans, hospital accreditation standards, and annual objectives of psychiatric departments and community organizations. The core premise is: to empower persons with mental illness and their families to become participants in designing their own care, while meeting the needs of a diverse Canadian population. However, recovery principles do not come with an implementation guide to fit the variability of different local contexts. How can policy recommendations and accreditation standards be effectively tailored to support a diversity of stakeholder values? To our knowledge, there is little evidence indicating the most effective manner to accelerate the uptake of recovery-oriented services among providers in a given/particular mental health treatment setting. This three-year Canadian Institute of Health Research Partnership in Health System Improvement and The Rx&D Health Research Foundation (HRF) Fostering Canadian Innovation in Research study (2013 to 2017) proposed participatory approaches to implementing recovery principles in a Department of Psychiatry serving a highly diverse Canadian and immigrant population. This project will be conducted in overlapping and recursive phases: I) Conduct formative research to (a) measure the current knowledge and attitudes toward recovery and recovery-oriented practices among service providers, while concurrently (b) exploring the experiential knowledge of recovery service-users and family members; II) Collaborate with service-users and the network-identified opinion leaders among providers to tailor Recovery-in-Action Initiatives to fit the needs and resources of a Department of Psychiatry; and III) Conduct a systematic theory-based evaluation of changes in attitudes and practices within the service-user/service-provider partnership group relative to the overall provider network of the department and identify the barriers and supports within the local context. Our anticipated outcome is a participatory toolkit to tailor recovery-oriented services, which will be disseminated to the Mental Health Commission of Canada and Accreditation Canada at the federal level, agencies at the provincial levels, and local knowledge end-users.

The benefits of user-centered and participatory design have been widely acknowledged for the development of technologies that are likely to be appropriated by the product's stakeholders. While participatory design has been applied to some affective technologies, the technical and algorithmic complexity of those based on semi-intelligent information filters (SIIFs) pose distinct challenges. Coincidentally, these technologies raise important and distinct ethical issues that make stakeholder input critical during product design. We present a framework for fostering genuine engagement from stakeholders through the case example of biomusic - a SIIF-based affective technology that translates emotion-related physiological changes into sound. During a 3-day workshop, ethnographic methods were used to collect data about the interface between biomusic and individuals on the autism spectrum. From these data, emergent themes, such as such as privacy, data security, conceptions of assistive technology and representation of emotions were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. In order to illuminate distinct design decisions implicated by these complex and interwoven ethical issues, we propose a design framework consisting of a technological, a human-centered and an ecological lens. This framework and recommendations provide a concrete praxis for engaging stakeholders in the complex issues associated with the design of SIIF-based emotion-oriented systems.

In occupational therapy practice, the rich interweaving of procedural and narrative reasoning results in healing transformations. However, a lack of research focus on transformational processes perpetuates a focus on observable and measurable behaviors. In line with the movement toward evidence-based implementation research, this article focuses on a case study drawn from an ethnography of therapist—child—family interactions in a sensory integration—based clinic to provide a thick description of the moments leading up to and following changes in bodily and social engagement for a child with autism. Using theoretical resources on acted narratives and aesthetics, this article provides a developing method and language to show how an occupational therapist and a child with autism throw breaches to jointly create embodied metaphors of what matters to the child in his or her everyday life. A microanalysis of therapist—child bodily and sensing interactions also reveals how narrative and procedural reasoning converge in moments of pleasure that ultimately lead to outcomes in participation outside the clinic and confound characterizations of autistic aloneness. Implications for research on sensory integration approaches in general and social interventions for children with autism are discussed.

Loneliness has been shown to be a predictor of poor health and early mortality in the general population. Older men living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are at heightened risk of experiencing loneliness. Here, we aim to describe the lived experience of loneliness in older men living with HIV and identify targets for intervention. We used grounded theory with a theoretical framework of narrative phenomenology to focus data collection and analysis on significant experiences related to loneliness. Based on individual narrative interviews with 10 older men living with HIV, experiences of loneliness related to “multiple losses,” “being invisible” and “hiding out” as emergent themes. Participants also described living with loneliness by “finding meaning,” “creating social experiences,” “pursuing interests and things to ‘live for’” and attending events in which “everyone is welcome.” The discussion situates experiences of loneliness within the accumulation of losses and stigmas over time and how the participants strategies for living with loneliness could inform interventions to reduce loneliness in older men living with HIV at individual and societal levels.

This article introduces social network analysis (SNA), a theoretical perspective accompanied by a set of methodologies, to occupational science. The convergence of SNA and occupational science is timely for both fields. By providing methodological approaches that flesh out a structural view of social networks, SNA measurements and mathematical terminology can effectively bridge the complexity of diverse interpretive frameworks used to understand occupational engagement and other constructs for humans as socially occupied beings. By focusing attention on the relationship of occupations to connectivity between agents, occupational science can make significant contributions to the ways in which the mattering or meaning of what people do with others nurtures the development and sustainability of social networks. We provide a brief history and roots of SNA in naturalistic observation, current terminology, and four widely used SNA research designs: egocentric, sociometric, sequenced, and two-mode. Drawing examples from our decade-long journey using SNA with narrative phenomenological conceptual frameworks, we illustrate how we used SNA with experience-near ethnographies to meet different objectives. In the discussion, we reflect on the parallax view created by the synergies between the disciplines and how the disruptive-productive effects that occur with mixing narrative phenomenology and SNA methods could address (mutual) methodological gaps that have seemingly limited conceptual development in the social sciences.