effectiveness of day center of occupational therapy on self – esteem and the length of hospitalization in patients with chronic mental patients

abstract introduction: low self–esteem has a continuous relation with chronic psychiatric disorder. occupational therapy increases self- esteem by performing purposive activities and profoundly believes in the relation of occupation and health .this research, examines the effect of day center of occupation therapy services on patients´ self–esteem and the length of duration of hospitalization in patients with chronic mental disorder materials and methods: this research is quasi-experimental through which 20 patients with chronic mental disorder received the psychiatric services in day center of psychiatry hospital 505 as the experimental group and 20 patients with chronic psychiatric disorder who didn’t  receive these services particpated  as the control group. the samples were selected via volunteer sampling. occupational therapy intervention of day center was held 2 days a week each 5 hours for three months. the participants completed the coppersmith's self-esteem scale to assess their self-esteem. the mean of hospitalization days was calculated for one year before and one year after intervention.  software spss 19 and chi-square and variance analysis were used to analyze the data. results: scores of patients' self-esteem significantly increased after occupational therapy intervention (p=0/04). also, the length of hospitalization of patients decreased after intervention (p=0/03). conclusion: the use of occupational therapy services as day center can be effective for increasing self-esteem and decreasing term of hospitalization in patients with chronic mental disorder.