Disability

Disability Definitions

Disability definitions, which are culturally specific and contested, are used to signify a particular relationship of the individual to bodily norms, social role performance, and society in general. Disability is a condition where individuals are identified as not meeting the potential expected of them by society (expressed through social and cultural norms). People are judged to be disabled because of limitations in their physical and/or mental functioning, lack of social support networks, inability to perform normative social roles, and/or living in a barrier-laden environment that prevents them from fully participating in society. In this context, disability results from a maladaptive interaction between individuals and their environments. The result is often dependency, isolation, and poverty.

Disability definitions are culturally grounded. For example, in the United States, disabilities are typically determined by physicians according to diagnostic categories such as spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis (MS), and depression. While members of some cultures will say that impotence, infertility, and diabetes are disabilities, according to the medical model, they are seldom classified as such.

Disability definitions are also strongly influenced by politics, ideology, and social policy. Physical disabilities are more likely to be diagnosed and reported than mental illness because of stigma and the added cost burden on governments and private health insurers to cover mental health services. The full effects of these differences are expressed in U.S. social policy and law. A search of federal statutory definitions of disability in the U.S. Code in 2005 revealed that disability was defined 67 times in different ways depending on whether the statute dealt with Veterans Affairs, developmental disabilities, the Fair Housing Act, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), assistive technology, or employment-based legislation. In addition, the interpretation of these definitions is often constricted or relaxed depending on the state of the economy and the availability of government resources.

Underlying these different definitions and determination of disability is a clash of paradigms used to conceptualize disability. The medical model views disability generally as a problem of the person caused by disease, trauma, or other health conditions and resulting in the need for individual medical care. Individuals are diagnosed and are generally referred to in terms of their primary medical diagnosis. Much of the medical and health services research conducted within this paradigm focuses on functional limitations, return to work, independence, and the performance of social roles.

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