A person who holds an occupational therapy job at an Upstate New York facility has heavily emphasized reading as one key recovery method for a man who suffered a stroke, according to a published report.
Mae Skidmore with the Northeast Center for Special Care in Lake Katrine said author Michael Schacker was set to leave on a lecture circuit when he suffered the stroke in early April 2008, The Times Herald-Record reports. The facility offers physical, occupational, speech and art therapy services for people who have suffered brain trauma.
"All he could say was 'read, read books, read books.' That was it," art therapist Mae Skidmore told the news source, noting they advanced to painting as a way of expressing his creativity. "So even though he wasn't able to communicate fully, he would pick chapters from the book that were important and we would read those chapters as we were creating. It was a basic kind of brainstorm about what kind of work we wanted to do."
Schacker wrote "A Spring Without Bees: How Colony Collapse Disorder Has Endangered Our Food Supply" and the artwork that derived from it has proven to be popular.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, occupational therapists help patients recover from injuries, illnesses and disabilities.