MODELS OF DISABILITY

Models of Disability

Models of Disability

Introduction

Disability is a disorder characterized by a persistent and age-inappropriate pattern of inattention and/ or hyperactivity/ impulsivity that are sufficient to cause impairment in occupational, academic and social settings .Although both symptoms of hyperactivity and inattention can be displayed by individuals; there are cases where individuals only display one group of symptoms and not the other. This paper focuses on disability and its two models i.e. the social and the medical model of disability. It further explores the ways in which disability discourses are located in wider political discourses of equal opportunities and human rights

Discussion

The Social Model of Disability

To understand the significance of contemporary understandings of disability it is important to remember that until very recently 'disability' was viewed almost exclusively as an individual, medical problem or 'personal tragedy' in western culture. Yet there is a wealth of anthropological and sociological evidence to suggest that societal responses to people with impairments or long term health conditions varies considerably across time, culture and location. The philosophical and cultural basis upon which the individualistic negative response to impairment rests is rooted firmly in the foundations of western culture. Whilst the vast majority of people with impairments were integrated into the community prior to the industrial revolution, there is substantial evidence that oppression and prejudice was widespread (Wessel, 2003, pp 108). There is also general agreement that the economic and social upheavals that accompanied the coming of industrial capitalism precipitated the institutionalisation of discriminatory policies and practices.

Industrialisation, urbanisation, changing work patterns, and accompanying ideologies: liberal utilitarianism, medicalisation, eugenics and social Darwinism, all contributed to and compounded ancient fears and prejudices. Taken together these structural forces provided intellectual justification for more extreme discriminatory practices, notably, the systematic removal of disabled people from the mainstream of economic and social life (Crow, 1996, pp 55).

Disabled people 'are set apart from the ordinary' in ways which see them as they pose a direct 'challenge' to commonly held social values by appearing 'unfortunate, useless, different, oppressed and sick'. Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from society. Disabled people are therefore an oppressed group. It follows from this analysis that having low incomes, for example, is only one aspect of our oppression. In contrast to previous definitions this cited impairment as the cause of disability and 'handicap (Ward, 2007, pp 68).

The role of medicine is to regulate and control sickness by curing and returning 'sick' people back to health. Although this account is concerned with 'acute' rather than 'chronic' conditions, it has dominated sociological analyses of reactions to and the management of ascribed social deviance including disablement ever since. The idea that mental illness and other forms of ascribed social deviance are little more than social constructs generated by an increasingly dominant and moralistic social order from the outset the course was criticised for its 'sociological bias'. It was updated twice before its abolition in 1994 and each ...