Disability, Chronic Illness, and Deafness (talk page)

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Note from my friend Justin

Grace Keller 29 Jan 2014 20:07

I think then you are missing the best definition of legally defined disability "the ADA defines a person with a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. This includes people who have a record of such an impairment, even if they do not currently have a disability. It also includes individuals who do not have a disability but are regarded as having a disability"

Http://adata.org/faq/what-definition-disability-under-ada

Moving this here for now; don't know where it fits

Grace Keller 18 Feb 2014 19:04

The politics of disability can be better understood by examining different "models" (approaches blended with basic assumptions) of difference, disability, and illness.¹

• medical models involve diagnosis with an illness or syndrome and treatment (sometimes glossed as support or education) by professionals, followed by cure, remission, or relapse. Subjects of the medical model are usually referred to as patients, clients, or victims. Medical models privilege the "expert" position and projections of normalcy.
• social models emphasize the network of relations and forces in past and present lived experience, and often involve building personal and social power through peer networking and sharing one's own story. Social models privilege lived experience and many ways of being/many paths to healing.
  • trauma and addiction social models involve acknowledging harms and working towards recovery by many paths.
  • diversity social models involve acknowledging difference, working against discrimiation and abuse (including denial of access to supports), and changing social norms.
• spiritual models are very diverse, emphasizing the play of forces on a person or group of people, and the potential for transformation inherent in difference, extreme states, and pain. They radically recontextualize and privilege aspects of life that may have previously carried stigma and suffering. Preferred outcomes include recovery, salvation, spiritual awakening, and finding a higher calling.
• eclectic models pragmatically draw from "whatever works" from the previous models, tolerate contradictions, and change as over time.

Each model has ways of interpreting and contextualizing issues faced by many different, disabled, and ill people like alienation, discrimination, role accomodation, poverty, suffering, and chronicity.

Footnotes

1. This way of organizing medical and social models is based on advocacy work by Sera Davidow, director of the Western Mass RLC. See http://www.westernmassrlc.org/glossary-of-terms for her psych diagnosis/trauma/extreme states-specific definitions.

Grace Keller wrote:

Comments From a friend:

• Eli Clare has a good page of resources http://eliclare.com/background/queer-disability-resources
• I love this and all writing by Mia Mingus http://www.resistinc.org/newsletters/articles/changing-framework-disability-justice
• and I notice that the first time disability justice is mentioned is about integrating it into a curricula. I think it should have its own section a lot sooner. I think there should be a section about the independent living movement and it's giant success as well as the current DJ critiques of it.