How About ARTA?

My wife and I just returned from vacation. We met our daughter's family at Dollywood. All of us were pleased by our experience at Dollywood -- especially our grandson, Xander! We would recommend visiting if you have kids.

In this post, I want to return to the notion of our profession adopting the term recreation therapy (or recreational therapy), rather than therapeutic recreation. And I would like to make a specific recommendation.

There seems to be a consensus building that: (a) The term therapeutic recreation is confusing to people outside the profession; (b) There is a need to clearly distinguish between inclusive recreation and recreation therapy; (c) It is time to consider adopting the term recreation therapy (or recreational therapy).

Finally, as Sharon stated, the time has come for our profession to truly clarify how we define ourselves. Employing the term recreation therapy would do this. Therefore, I would propose that ATRA become ARTA in order to focus us on health protection and health promotion (in contrast to supplying recreation experiences for persons with disabilities).

What do you think? If you have an opinion on changing to ARTA, please post your comment or let ATRA President Bryan McCormick know of your view. It would be good to see some discussion on this issue by the members and Board at ATRA in Orlando.