Joni Watling: Practicing interdisciplinary OT in mental health

Dr. Joni Watling at a M Health Fairview event during her time there as an employee. 

When alumna Dr. Joni Watling decided in her late 30s to pursue her masters degree in occupational therapy (OT) at the University of Minnesota, what stood out most to her was the program’s interdisciplinary nature. Coming from a background in journalism and music, she was a nontraditional student in more than one way and looking to reinvent herself. 

“Years ago my older sister told me that she could see me working as an occupational therapist because of the diversity of creative possibilities that exist and the opportunity to not have the same two days in a row,” Watling said. “There's a structure, yet there's unpredictability as well.”

The program “sold itself” from the first time she attended an open house, Watling said. She felt energized by the possibility of working with faculty in the program and saw possibilities to put her skillset to use in a new way. Instead of determining “who, when, where, why, and how” in order to write a news story, she would apply that method to understand a client's case. 

“The whole interdisciplinary [aspect of the program], to hit that from the ground running was fantastic because it taught me about all the different people that are really involved in providing support to a patient or client through the different lenses that we all bring to the table,” Watling said. 

After graduating from the college’s OT master’s program, Watling started working in inpatient psychiatry at M Health Fairview on the Twin Cities campus. A couple years later, she also began to teach adjunct in the OT program. Around five years after graduation, Watling and her husband moved to Virginia, where changes with Medicare and Medicaid made it difficult for her to translate her Minnesota mental health care experience and led her to engage in mental health advocacy. She began working with a recovery and reintegration community in Richmond. When the COVID-19 pandemic descended, the University of Minnesota’s OT program reenlisted Watling as a virtual adjunct instructor. In doing so, Minnesota OT fieldwork students served Richmond’s reintegration population under Watling’s supervision by creating occupational profiles of clients, conducting assessments and motivational interviews, reporting their findings, researching solutions to barriers, and offering interventions.

“For me, the University’s OT program has been there through thick and thin,” Watling said. “Doing mental health fieldwork online through the program during the pandemic was really innovative and I loved the collaboration.”

Now, Watling works for Virginia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Disability Services in an inpatient psychiatric facility. She works with forensic populations who have stabilized and are in the process of reintegrating. Watling said that every single day, encounters in her work require her to draw on foundational information she learned during her time in the OT program. For instance, when psychiatric patients are responding to questions about their symptoms, Watling can analyze their motor skills and determine whether they’re still in active psychosis. 

“The opportunity to have the really terrific mental health fieldwork placements that I had when I was a student as well as some phenomenal fieldwork educators for pediatric, adult, and behavioral health [rotations]— they taught me a lot,” Watling said.