ABSTRACT
Therapeutic recreation traces its beginnings to 400 bc, when Socrates and Plato rst considered the relationship between physical health and mental health. Centuries later, one of the signers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, MD, advocated for recreation in the Pennsylvania Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Philadelphia. In 1810, Rush said of the individuals hospitalized there, “certain kinds of labor, exercise, and amusements should be contrived for them, which should act, at the same time, upon their bodies and minds.”1 As such, recreational therapy had its roots in vocational and occupational therapy in psychiatric facilities for about the next 100 years, during which time crafts, amusements, drama, and hospital occupations were believed to be valuable for those involved in such typically long hospitalizations. Even as late as the beginning of the 20th century, the terms occupational and recreational were virtually synonymous.
