Medical approach to disability. A history of a multifaceted relationship
Keywords:
disability, diversity, models, paradigmsAbstract
Disability expresses an object, but principally also a concept with an outline difficult to define. A concept as much undefined as complex. In comparison to its definition, disability as a concept has not yet been untangled definitely even due to the fact that disability represents by itself the difficulty to trace a stable and certain dividing line.
The present paper will offer a discussion of the so-called interpretative models linked to the meaning and the magnitude of disability under a first medical and then sociological point of view.
During last decades, in fact, the understanding towards sociological instances in relation with disability have changed remarkably, trying to bridge the gap existing in the past, when disability was observed only as a personal health issue and consequently only under one specific framework of analysis, abstracting it from the boundary conditions and from the society in a de-constructional approach which lead to disregard disability per se.
Thus in the times, disability passed from being a personal and medical problem to a phenomenon with its own social impact and a social construction, deviating the observation of disability from the medical and health point of view to a holistic approach, even if with consistent differences in relation to the diverse paradigms of interpretation.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Transfer of Copyright and Permission to Reproduce Parts of Published Papers.
Authors retain the copyright for their published work. No formal permission will be required to reproduce parts (tables or illustrations) of published papers, provided the source is quoted appropriately and reproduction has no commercial intent. Reproductions with commercial intent will require written permission and payment of royalties.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.