Rehabilitation and self-care
Barbara Smith, Linda Field in Nursing Care, 2019
To understand disability, we need to look much further than the label and the medical facts. Consider the following two models of disability: Medical model of disability: this model considers disability as an illness. The disabled person is one who needs to be cured so that they can fit into ‘normal’ society. The emphasis is on the impairment or condition rather than the person. The medical model looks at what is wrong with the person and searches for ways to fix it. With this model, the professionals working in the field of disability are perceived as being the experts. This has led to such professionals having control over people with disabilities, which may result in disabled people feeling that they are disempowered and segregated from society (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2018).Social model of disability: this model was created by people with disabilities. The social model looks at the person’s life experiences rather than focusing on the person’s impairments. The model sees solutions to the person’s problems, such as barriers created by society, lack of access, lack of understanding, lack of awareness and oppressive behaviours. The social model stresses that support to enable people to take part in society should be given as a right and not as a favour. The social model focuses on the person rather than the condition or disability (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2018).
Congenital and acquired disabilities: what counts as unfair advantage in the Paralympics?
Silvia Camporesi, Mike McNamee in Bioethics, Genetics and Sport, 2018
In contrast to the medical model, the social model of disability understands disability as a relation between an individual and her social environment. This relation results in the exclusion of people with certain physical and mental characteristics from major domains of life. As put by Oliver (1990), ‘Defining impairment or disability or illness is not simply a matter of language, it is a matter of politics and inclusion’. The social model was in the 1990s the bedrock of disability activism, advocating for society to assume responsibility for removing barriers and accepting that impaired persons are not to be considered along the normal/pathological binary, but rather as just one instance of human diversity and of equal value. Disability activists have pushed for the de-medicalisation of disability in many contexts. Its leitmotif is that we should change society, not people. Now of course, if one is to change society one must change people and in particular people with disabling attitudes and biases towards those with impairments.
Disability, Ideology, and Quality of Life
Joel Michael Reynolds, Christine Wieseler in The Disability Bioethics Reader, 2022
A defining characteristic of the disability rights movement is a particular explanation of the disadvantages experienced by disabled people. Disadvantages are explained as effects not of biomedical conditions of individuals but of the socially created environment that is shared by disabled and nondisabled people. This environment (it is said) is so constructed that nondisabled people are privileged and disabled people penalized. Disability is a social problem that involves the discriminatory barriers that bar some people but not others from the goods that society has to offer. For this reason, the view is often called the Social Model of disability. It contrasts with the traditional view, sometimes termed the Medical Model, according to which disability is a problem of individuals whose biomedical conditions disadvantage them. On the Medical Model, disadvantages are natural and inevitable outcomes of simple biomedical facts. Reductions of these natural disadvantages can be accomplished only by individual cures (changing the biomedical facts) or by charitable donations intended to compensate the victims of disability for their inevitable and pitiable conditions. The Social Model depicts disability as a problem experienced by a class of people, a problem that is caused by social organization and that can be remedied by social change. The Medical Model is an individualistic rather than a social theory. Disabilities are properties of individuals, and remedies (e.g., cures, rehabilitations, charitable donations) are meted out one individual at a time.
Living with stigma: Voices from the Cured Lepers’ village in Ghana
Published in Social Work in Health Care, 2019
Cynthia Akorfa Sottie, Judith Darkey
In the 1990s, the social model of disability became popular in response to the criticisms of the predominant medical or individual model of disability. An underlying principle of the social model of disability is the assertion that disability is a social construct and not an individual phenomenon. The Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) in 1976 defined impairment as “lacking part of or all of a limb, or having a defective limb, organism or mechanism of the body” while disability is defined as the “disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by contemporary organization which takes no or little account of people who have impairments and thus excludes them from mainstream of social activities” (Lang, 2001, p. 7). Disability is therefore imposed on the person by society by dictating what the person can or cannot do.
Social anxiety following traumatic brain injury: an exploration of associated factors
Published in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 2018
William Curvis, Jane Simpson, Natalie Hampson
These findings are also consistent with social models of disability, which highlight the need to focus on the societal context of impairment (Oliver, 1983, 2004). Instead of focusing on the functional impairments of the individual, the social model considers disability to be caused by the economic, cultural and environmental barriers that are faced by people with physical or cognitive impairments. Consistent with the findings of the present study, Oliver (2004) discusses how cultural norms around disability, which view impairment as unattractive and unwanted, negatively impact people by creating stigmatising, discriminatory environments that devalue and actively disable people with impairments, thereby causing psychological distress. Individualistic psychiatric or psychological approaches often fail to take this into account, instead conceptualising psychological problems as a consequence of the impairment itself and focusing on the need for people to seek treatment or adapt to the disabling environment (Simpson & Thomas, 2014; Simpson, McMillan, & Reeve, 2013).
Communication as a human right: Citizenship, politics and the role of the speech-language pathologist
Published in International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2018
Declan Murphy, Rena Lyons, Clare Carroll, Mari Caulfield, Gráinne de Paor
One of the frameworks underpinning speech-language pathology practice is the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) (World Health Organization, 2001). The ICF has relevance from a human rights perspective because it takes account of both the impairment and everyday activities and participation (Threats & Worrall, 2004). According to the social model of disability, societal barriers restrict activities and participation for disabled people and disability is a form of social oppression (Finkelstein, 2004). Others argue that the impairment also plays a role in restricting activities and participation (Shakespeare, 2006; Thomas, 2004). Declan’s narrative highlighted that he viewed some of his communication challenges are related to his own impairment and others are related to other factors; for example, background noise, attitudes and behaviour of others. His story also validates the view of O’Halloran and Larkins (2008, p. 25) that communication participation is a subjective experience and
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