Hi to Everyone!

Welcome to my page.

     I’m Lena (Dr. Lena Lipskaya-Velikovsky), I’m relay passionate of my roles as a practicing occupational therapist, researcher and educator in the field of Participation, Occupational Balance and Mental Health. I strongly believe in importance of these fields of knowledge for well-being and health  based on theories, research, clinical and personal experience, working hard to balance my professional activities with the family life (mom of three girls, spouse, daughter and sister) and my hobbies of hiking, dancing and crafting.

     I began my clinical work as an occupational therapist in the Beer-Yaakov-Ness-Ziona Mental Health Center. For almost 20 years of the practice I’ve been working in various types of acute wards and ambulatory programs, developing new services and practices, such as a computerized center for functional and cognitive rehabilitation and research. My clinical and academic activities are closely tied, making mutual contribution to both science and practice in the field of mental health.  

     I finished my Ph.D. study in Occupational Therapy within the direct track at the Tel Aviv University in 2010. I held post-doctoral position in 2012-2014 founded by the fellowship from the Tauber Foundation and the research project was done under supervision of Prof. T. Krupa, Queen’s University, Canada and Prof. M. Kotler, Tel –Aviv University.

     I was an integral part of the Occupational Therapy faculty of Tel Aviv University since 2006 until Feb. 2021 and was in-charge of the mental health field. From March 2021 I’m a Senior Lecturer and am in charge of the mental health field in the School of Occupational Therapy of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

     My research works and my lab are focused on exploring everyday functioning and objective and subjective participation patterns of people with various mental health conditions. We examine factors affecting the participation such as sense of belonging, motor abilities and sensory modulation over the more conventional ones, such as psychiatric symptoms and cognition. The studies incorporate advanced technologies to expand our understanding of factors underlying occupational performance and participation, such as EEG and eye-tracking systems for everyday tasks (Tobii-Pro Glasses). In addition, I investigate efficacy of Occupational Therapy evaluation and intervention process and develop new tools and technics for practice, both low-tech and hi-tech, e.g. “Occupational Connections” – occupation oriented intervention for in-patient settings and Virtual Reality interventions for cognitive and daily-life functioning promotion. I worked on translation, cultural adaptation to the Israeli context and establishment of psychometric properties of the existing and well-established tools dedicated to the unique profile of people with mental health conditions. Some examples of such a tools are evaluation of engagement in meaningful occupations and functional capacity: “The Profiles of Occupational Engagement of People with Serious Mental Illness” and assessments of functional capacity - “Performance Assessment of Self Care Skills”. I also lead a process of translation and cultural adaptation and adoption of intervention for community living people with mental health conditions  – “Action Over Inertia”. The results of these works were found to be important and were accepted for presentation in leading conferences and journals in the field of occupational therapy, rehabilitation and psychiatry.