Assistant Professor
Karla Gray is an occupational therapist with over forty years of experience working with adults and seniors who have behavioral health conditions. She has held positions of case manager, living skills instructor, program coordinator, occupational therapist, department director, consultant, and advocate. She has provided occupational therapy services in client homes, residential facilities, day/community program settings, acute psychiatric hospital and Evaluation and Treatment units, partial hospitalization programs and as a private practitioner.
She has served on boards of directors for the Washington Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Washington Occupational Therapy Association (WOTA), American Association for Behavioral Healthcare (AABH), American Association for Partial Hospitalization (AAPH) and has been a member of the American Occupational Therapy Association’s (AOTA) Mental Health Special Interest Section coordinating committee, among others.Ms. Gray has presented before audiences at the National Association for Rural Mental Health Annual Conference (1995), AABH and its precursor the AAPH (annually 1994-2005), AOTA Annual Conference and/or Specialty Conferences 2004, 2005, 2010, 2017, NAMI National Conference, and multiple state occupational therapy associations since 1993.
She has authored or co-authored peer reviewed textbook chapters on Ethics, Creating a Positive Patient Experience, Community Resources and Case Management, Collaborative Work with Teams and Policymakers, and Evidence-based Employment Services for Persons with Serious Mental Illness. Journal articles to her credit include topics the of The Process of Group Treatment with the Chronically Mentally Ill, Expressive Therapy Alternatives, Incorporating the (OT) Framework into a Mental Health Practice Setting, and Mental Illness in Children and Adolescents. She has collaborated with others to develop Standards of Practice for partial hospitalization services for adults, geriatrics, and youth.