Search Results

This chapter explores the differences between a medical and a social model of disability to support application of these models to children with learning disabilities who experience, or are at risk of, child sexual exploitation (CSE). Medical knowledge about learning disabilities can support with assessment and understanding the physical symptoms that accompany a learning disability. The social model reinforces how social, cultural, material, and attitudinal barriers also form a disability and, in relation to children and young people with disabilities who experience, or are at risk of, CSE, highlight the importance of ensuring that this group, along with their non-disabled peers, have the support and opportunities to develop safe and healthy relationships. The chapter includes an overview of how disability intersects with abuse in general and CSE in particular. In addition, it draws upon evidence-based learning to consider how theory-informed services can identify children with learning disabilities affected by CSE and implement accessible services that deliver preventative and responsive practice to meet their needs.

The most significant development in the relationship between international human rights law and mental disability law has been the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The CRPD furthers the human rights approach to disability and recognizes the right of people with disabilities to equality in most aspects of life. It provides a framework for ensuring that mental health laws fully recognize the rights of those with mental illness. It categorically affirms the social model of disability, reconceptualizes mental health rights as disability rights, and extends existing human rights to take into account the specific rights experiences of persons with disabilities. Scholars characterize the Convention as a “moral compass” for social change, reflecting a “paradigm shift” in the way we think about and treat persons with disabilities, and a “beacon for an international consensus on justice and disability,” ushering in a “new era in human rights protection,” bringing “hope to the vulnerable,” and arguing that it illustrates “profound shifts both in the conception of human rights and the implementation of human rights in public policy domains.” This chapter discusses the most important provisions of the Convention. It looks at scholarly literature evaluating the impact that the CRPD might have locally as well as the still-meager case law that considers the CRPD. It briefly looks at some of the criticisms of the Convention, and concludes with some thoughts as to the most likely “pressure point areas” in which future developments will suggest the Convention’s ultimate impact on the population in question.

This chapter explores the impact of the intersections of ageing and physical disability on older people’s sexual and intimate lives. It reviews the shift in conceptual framings of physical disability from notions of impairment through to Crip/queer critiques. This shift reflects a movement from a focus on the particularity of an individual’s ‘normal’ capabilities to a critical deconstruction of the power of ‘norms’ and the pathologies and prejudices that constitute disability. It then surveys some of the emergent studies and scholarship that both describe discourses of desexualisation and set the beginnings of the agenda for their reversal

The Chapter briefly summarises the book’s chief arguments and those of each of its Chapters. It argues for a broadening out of enquiry across the fields of ageing and disability towards engagement with ageing that is multifaced. It argues that critical gerontology could benefit by adopting an interactional or biopsychosocial model of disability, consistent with human rights approaches to disability. It points to areas within critical scholarship on disability and ageing and within lifecourse perspectives that represent starting points in opening conversations across the two fields. The Chapter outlines some future directions for scholarship and approaches to public policies on ageing. It points to theorising of personal meaning in life from a humanist perspective as offering potential to better communicate understandings of how a sense of value and meaning is achieved at any stage of life. It argues for a more realistic engagement with what it is to age and to live a life of meaning at all of life’s stages, for a more complete picture of the diverse experiences that are involved in disability and ageing, and for development of more realistic societal engagement with disability as an issue relevant to all human beings.

This chapter starts by outlining the existing models of disability and by relating these models to the Convention. The aim is not to advance debates about the models themselves but to examine the extent to which these models have influenced the CRPD’s own understanding of disability. The focus lies especiallyon the social model of disability, which has transformed the view of disability around the world. This is followed by an investigation of the way in which this understanding of disability bears upon the entire field of international human rights law. The chapter further examines the mainstreaming of disability and its consideration by the treaty bodies as well as its consequences for the field as a whole. It finally looks beyond international human rights law by evaluating how disability is addressed by UN agencies.

This chapter defines disability as a stable personal trait that tends to diminish a person's wellbeing relative to some given context. This definition goes beyond the social model or the medical model of disability. Such models resolve the range of moral and political problems for which a satisfactory disability theory is required. Kahane and Savulescu propose instead a conception of disability closely tied to wellbeing. They see disabilities as traits that tend to decrease a person's wellbeing relative to certain circumstances. They claim three advantages for adopting this view. First, disability is context dependent. A disabling trait might not be a negative factor if the person's wellbeing is not actually reduced by it. Second, their view is inclusive — implying that we all have disabilities of various sorts. And finally, their approach offers an explanation why disabling traits should be corrected, for our lives might be worse if we don't.

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the different models of disability to help sport and exercise psychology researchers understand the various philosophical and psychological perspectives embedded in each model. First examined is the medical model and how it frames disability as a personal flaw and a medical condition that needs fixing. The social model follows, which suggests that while people might have an impairment it is the physical and social environment that causes disability. The third model discussed is the social-relational model, which acknowledges that people’s physical impairment, the built environment, and other people’s attitudes can all influence the experience of disability. In the tragedy model, people have the cultural viewpoint that having an impairment is tragic, that people with disabilities have a poor quality of life and should be pitied. Finally, the affirmation model repudiates the tragedy model and suggests that having a disability, while challenging, is often embraced and can result in benefits. The strengths and weaknesses of all models are discussed and examples of disability sport psychology research are used to illustrate the models.

This chapter highlights the importance of bodily impairment and infirmity in creating social divisions in later life. It begins with a consideration of what constitutes disability and impairment. It examines such distinctions and divisions in the light of the social model of disability and the distinction between ageing with disability and ageing into disability. While the former draws more easily upon the social model, the social identification with disability is more difficult for those whose adult lives have placed them in the position of being able-bodied adults. The confounding of age and disability represents not simply a social divide, but a divide within the person. While policies designed to serve older people as former workers who have become pensioners to some degree protects the financial interests of older disabled people, the absence of community framed by disability risks a greater social exclusion. The rise of policies designed both to encourage older people to be responsible for the success of their own ageing and to more strictly delineate distinctions (and entitlements) between the frail and the non-frail has sharpened this division. The difficulties are highlighted of aligning a social model of disability and the common interests of disabled people with a model based on frailty as an intersectional location fashioned around age disadvantage and disablement.

Chapter 1 introduces the key question asked by the book: whether mental health law should be abolished or reformed and defines all the key terms (e.g. mental health law, mental impairment, involuntary detention and treatment, voluntary treatment, abolition and reform, etc). It puts mental health law into its wider social context pointing out that while at least 20 per cent of the community in any given year and 50 per cent in their lifetime have a mental health problem, mental health law only applies to a relatively small number of persons with severe mental health problems who are medically assessed to be at risk of harming themselves or others. It sets out the background to the fierce controversy about the future of mental health law during the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) negotiations and since its entry into force in 2008. It explains the conceptual framework for the book being human rights treaty interpretation and the jurisprudential or ethical analysis consistent with Ronald Dworkin of three core CRPD and human rights concepts—dignity (including autonomy), equality, and participation—to create the ‘interpretive compass.’ It discusses the social model of disability, the medical model, the human rights model, and the interactive model. It defines the scope of the book in that it excludes consideration of mental health specific criminal law doctrines like fitness to plead and the insanity defence and clarifies that the focus is on mental health law rather than other forms of substitute decision-making like guardianship. It explains the structure of the book.

The four activities in this chapter focus on how disability is conceptualized. Students’ illness beliefs are explored in one activity, and they compare their beliefs with those of a peer. A second activity involves finding examples of the three models of disability (moral, medical, and social) in various media venues. Having found examples in daily life students then interview a peer about their beliefs and models of disability, and then reverse roles. The understanding of models in others’ belief systems are a necessary step before exploring one’s own model of disability, which students typically find more difficult. Lastly, students explore what it might be like to be newly diagnosed with a disability, as this is an experience they will encounter with clients.

This chapter introduces the ways that The Mark of Slavery moves between experiences of disability in everyday enslaved life and the discursive relationship between racism and ableism forged in antebellum medicine, law, politics, and popular culture. The “new” disability history and, in particular, this field’s use of a social (as opposed to a medical) model of disability is central to the project of writing a disability history of slavery. Disability’s power to stigmatize derived from its relationship to abnormality and its ability to rationalize inequality hinged on one’s real or imagined proximity to it. As disability intertwined with the broader metalanguage of race in the antebellum years, it minimized or amplified specific qualities imagined as innate to whiteness or blackness, racializing and delimiting “normal” bodies.

This chapter is a transcript of an interview with David Webb, the author of Thinking about Suicide, who completed what is thought to be the world’s first PhD on suicide by a suicide survivor. The chapter explores David’s support for the inclusion of mental distress within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It considers the value of the social model for people experiencing suicidal feelings, and as a potential antidote to the increasing medicalisation of suicide. The chapter includes a discussion of the contested nature of impairment in mental health and of the relationship between disability and discrimination. It argues for the development of a social model of madness which is based upon, not separate from, the Social Model of Disability.

Japanese educators recently created a new disability category, “developmental disabilities” to refer to relatively mild cognitive and behavioral disabilities, such as learning disabilities, ADHD, and high functioning autism. Children with “developmental disabilities” experience unique needs and struggles due to the relatively invisible nature of their disabilities. In many respects, they appear to be typically developing children, and their difficulties can be misinterpreted as resulting from laziness, disobedience, or disrespect. Until 2007 when new educational policies were implemented, Japanese children with “developmental disabilities” were recognized as “slow learners” or “difficult” and educated in general education classrooms without specialized support, in part out of concern for consequent stigma. The chapter approaches the issue of disability in Japan through a sociocultural model of disability. This chapter describes how Japanese people understand disability in relation to Japanese concepts of self and traditional educational and socialization beliefs and practices.

Ensuring that people with learning difficulties are included in research studies in ways that enhance their participation, as well as their emancipation, are important and necessary goals for researchers who work with them and for people with learning difficulties themselves as self-advocates in research. Drawing on relevant epistemological and methodological debates and evidence from research studies that use different, more creative methods with people with learning difficulties, this chapter examines the benefits (and challenges) of using participatory methods within and outside learning difficulty research. The chapter focuses on specific examples of participatory research studies that use visual methods and PhotoVoice as part of multi-method projects. The ethical challenges involved in using these kinds of methods and working collaboratively with people with learning difficulties in participatory research are also considered.

This chapter explores the problems facing the use of the social model of disability in relation to mental distress. Impairment is a key component of both medical and social models, but in the mental health field, underlying impairment has yet to be identified. It follows that both the impairment and imposition of barriers, discrimination etc are socially constructed, raising the possibility of a 'double' social model wherein notions of impairment are actually predicated on socially (un)valued differences. While the social model is historically linked to activism, accepting impairment exists in states of distress may be a concession to the medical model.

This chapter examines the issue of access to health care from a global perspective by focusing on the mandates of the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). The social model of disability underlies the CRPD’s mandate that States ensure equal access to health care for persons with disabilities as integral to achieving their human rights, including rehabilitation services, regardless of whether individuals have incurable biological impairments. Thus, disability no longer can be regarded as a reason for reducing eligibility for scarce health care resources. The chapter also demonstrates the implications of the CRPD for HIV infection/AIDS programming and for the practice of clinical medicine.

This chapter focuses on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), and questions whether mental health service-users and survivors are best served by becoming subsumed within a broader disability movement. It considers some limitations of the social model of disability and identifies some aspects of mental health service users’ and survivors’ experience which set them apart from people with physical impairments/disabilities and yet are central to the CRPD: issues relating to autonomy (self-determination) and responsibility. The author draws on her own experience as a long standing ally of the disabled people's movement and an activist in the survivor movement in the UK, s well as her specific ‘extra/non-ordinary experiences’ (what psychiatry calls religious psychosis), depression and suicidality. The chapter concludes that mental health service users and survivors need their own Convention of Rights, complementary to the UNCRPD.

It may appear that there are grounds for an alliance between opponents of enhancement and disability advocates. People from both camps condemn parents who aspire to improve the physical and psychological traits their children would otherwise be born with, a condemnation often expressed as an accusation of eugenics. Despite these superficial appearances, the author will argue that disability advocates have nothing to applaud in Michael Sandel’s critique of enhancement, which is based on false and sometimes pernicious claims about the value of ‘normal’ human beings. However, they will also argue that disability advocates fail to provide convincing reasons for condemning parental decisions to avoid or eliminate certain traits their children would otherwise be born with. Contrary to what disability advocates and opponents of enhancement suggest, it is often a violation rather than an instantiation of parental virtue to abandon judgements about whether one’s children’s biological givens should be changed.