Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Persons With Disabilities

Counseling interventions are considered a resource to support full functioning and participation of people with disabilities in their communities or specified environments of choice. The World Health Organization's (WHO) International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) considers disability to result from a person with a health condition's interaction with his or her environment where a person is restricted in his or her ability to engage in activities typical of others in the same or a similar environment. The functions of an individual with a disability are impaired by any disease, disorder, or health condition, and the severity of impairment contributes to the extent of disability or activity restrictions. The environment can enable or hamper participation. For example, an enabling environment for a person with mobility limitations would include access to mobility aids while, by contrast, environmental barriers Persons With Disabilities would include inaccessible buildings. Additional limiting factors such as negative attitudes, stigma, and power relations arise from social environments, and these factors often influence the organization of and delivery of support services. Persons with disabilities are restricted from activities typically open to others by environmental restrictions more than by the objective qualities of their specific disability. This raises the question whether persons with disabilities need counseling, and if they do, (a) what the rationale is for providing counseling services, and (b) what would the counseling address.

Historical Considerations

Persons with disabilities are and have historically been denied recognition as a socioculturally oppressed minority due to the restrictions to activities and lifestyle ordinary to typically developing others. For instance, people with disabilities have limited access to basic social amenities compared to typically developing others because of negative social prejudice against them. They also tend to be socioculturally dis-advantaged and ascribed negative characteristics because of their disability-related differences (e.g., incompetent, poor, suffering).

Sociocultural Deprivation

Historically, people with significant disabilities were detained in institutions for (a) cosmetic reasons because they were considered an unpleasant sight from which persons without disabilities should be protected, (b) political reasons in the sense of their being denied basic humanness and citizenship, and (c) cultural reasons in the sense that their life experiences and needs were regarded too different from those of ordinary persons to warrant social concern. Acts of genocide were also committed against persons with disabilities in that they could be castrated without their consent and be denied the right to marry or procreate. Persons with disabilities have also been treated as commodities by charitable organizations, some of which made fortunes for their founders and directors by marketing the unmet needs of persons with disabilities. Counseling was rarely an option for this population about which there was considerable ambivalence regarding their role and function in the community.

Influence of Disability Rights Movements

With the internationalization of civil rights for cultural minorities, persons with disabilities were perceived by the civic community, state, and federal governments to benefit from counseling that would enable their participation to the extent possible in typical activities and environments for others. Disability rights movements resulted in several national laws and international conventions to enable people with disabilities in their entitlement to equal and fair access to resources and a preferred life style. It may seem paradoxical that people with disabilities are regarded as in need of counseling when the evidence suggests that they are victims of societal oppression.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution