Contents

Medical model of disability

This article's "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. Please help rewrite or integrate negative information to other sections through discussion on the talk page. (October 2023)

Biomedical view of human disability

Part of a serieson
Discrimination
Forms Institutional Structural Statistical Taste-based
Attributes Age Caste Class Dialect Disability Genetic Hair texture Height Language Looks Mental disorder Race / Ethnicity Skin color Scientific racism Rank Sex Sexual orientation Species Size Viewpoint
Social Arophobia Acephobia Adultism Anti-albinism Anti-autism Anti-homelessness Anti-drug addicts Anti-intellectualism Anti-intersex Anti-left handedness Anti-Masonry Antisemitism Aporophobia Audism Biphobia Clannism Cronyism Elitism Ephebiphobia Social determinants of health Social determinants of health in poverty Social determinants of mental health Fatphobia Gayphobia Gerontophobia Heterosexism HIV/AIDS stigma Homophobia Leprosy stigma Lesbophobia Discrimination against men Misandry Misogyny Nepotism Pedophobia Perpetual foreigner Pregnancy Reverse Sectarianism Supremacism White Transphobia Non-binary Transmisogyny Trans men Vegaphobia Xenophobia
Religious Ahmadiyya Atheism Baháʼí Faith Buddhism Catholicism Christianity post–Cold War era Falun Gong Hinduism Persecution Untouchability Islam Persecution Jehovah's Witnesses Judaism Persecution LDS or Mormon Neopaganism Eastern Orthodox Oriental Orthodox Protestantism Rastafari Shi'ism Sufism Zoroastrianism
Ethnic/national Afghan African Albanian American Arab Armenian Asian France South Africa United States Assyrian Azerbaijani Black people African Americans China South Africa Bengali Bulgarian Catalan Chechen Chinese Colombian Croat Filipino Fulani Finnish Georgian Greek Haitian Hazara Hungarian Igbo Indian Indigenous people Australia Canada United States Iranian Irish Israeli Italian Japanese Jewish Korean Kurdish Lithuanian Malay Māori Mexican Middle Eastern Mongolian Nigerian Pakistani Palestinians Pashtun Polish Quebec Romani Romanian Serb Slavic Somali Tatar Thai Turkish Ukrainian Uyghur Venezuelan Vietnamese
Manifestations Anti-LGBT rhetoric Blood libel Bullying Cancel culture Capital punishment for homosexuality Compulsory sterilization Corrective rape Counter-jihad Cultural genocide Defamation Democide Disability hate crime Dog whistle Economic Education Employment Eliminationism Enemy of the people Ethnic cleansing Ethnic conflict Ethnic hatred Ethnic joke Ethnocide Excellence Forced conversion Freak show Gay bashing Gendercide Genital modification and mutilation Genocide examples Glass ceiling Hate crime LGBT Hate group Hate speech Homeless dumping Housing Indian rolling Intersectionality Kill Haole Day Lavender scare LGBT grooming conspiracy theory List of people killed for being transgender Lynching Mortgage Murder music Native American mascots Braves Blackhawks Chiefs Occupational segregation Opposition to immigration Persecution Pogrom Political repression Purge Racialization Religious persecution Religious terrorism Religious violence Religious war Scapegoating Segregation academy Sexual harassment Sex-selective abortion Slut-shaming Trans bashing Victimisation Violence against women White flight White genocide conspiracy theory Wife selling Witch-hunt
Policies Age of candidacy Blood purity Blood quantum Crime of apartheid Disabilities Catholic Jewish Gender pay gap Gender roles Gerontocracy Gerrymandering Ghetto benches Internment Jewish quota Law for Protection of the Nation MSM blood donation restrictions No kid zone Nonpersons Numerus clausus (as religious or racial quota) One-drop rule Racial quota Racial segregation Jim Crow laws Nuremberg Laws Racial steering Redlining Same-sex marriage (laws and issues prohibiting) Segregation age racial religious sexual Social exclusion Sodomy law State atheism State religion Ugly law Voter suppression
Countermeasures Affirmative action Anti-discrimination law Anti-racism Constitutional colorblindness Cultural assimilation Cultural pluralism Diversity training Empowerment Fat acceptance movement Feminism Fighting Discrimination Hate speech laws by country Human rights Intersex human rights LGBT rights Masculism Multiculturalism Nonviolence Racial integration Reappropriation Self-determination Social integration Toleration
Related topics Allophilia Amatonormativity Bias Christian privilege Cisnormativity Civil liberties Dehumanization Diversity Ethnic penalty Figleaf Gender-blind Heteronormativity Historical eugenics Internalized oppression Intersectionality Male privilege Masculism Medical model of disability autism Multiculturalism Net bias Neurodiversity Oikophobia Oppression Police brutality Political correctness Polyculturalism Power distance Prejudice Prisoner abuse Racial bias in criminal news in the United States Racism by country Racial color blindness Religious intolerance Second-generation gender bias Snobbery Social exclusion Social identity threat Social model of disability Social stigma Speciesism Stereotype threat The talk White privilege
v t e

The medical model of disability, or medical model, is based in a biomedical perception of disability. This model links a disability diagnosis to an individual's physical body. The model supposes that this disability may reduce the individual's quality of life and aims to diminish or correct this disability with medical intervention.^[1] It is often contrasted with the social model of disability.

The medical model focuses on curing or managing illness or disability. By extension, the medical model supposes a compassionate or just society invests resources in health care and related services in an attempt to cure or manage disabilities medically. This is in an aim to expand functionality and/or improve functioning, and to allow disabled persons a more "normal" life. The medical profession's responsibility and potential in this area is seen as central.

Before the introduction of the biomedical model, patients relaying their narratives to the doctors was paramount. Through these narratives and developing an intimate relationship with the patients, the doctors would develop treatment plans in a time when diagnostic and treatment options were limited.^[2] This could particularly be illustrated with aristocratic doctors treating the elite during the 17th and 18th century.^[3]

In 1980, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced a framework for working with disability, publishing the "International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps". The framework proposed to approach disability by using the terms Impairment, Handicap and Disability.^[4]

• Impairment = a loss or abnormality of physical bodily structure or function, of logic-psychic origin, or physiological or anatomical origin
• Disability = any limitation or function loss deriving from impairment that prevents the performance of an activity in the time lapse considered normal for a human being
• Handicap = the disadvantaged condition deriving from impairment or disability limiting a person performing a role considered normal in respect of age, sex and social and cultural factors

While personal narrative is present in interpersonal interactions, and particularly dominant in Western Culture, personal narrative during interactions with medical personnel is reduced to relaying information about specific symptoms of the disability to medical professionals.^[1] The medical professionals then interpret the information provided about the disability by the patient to determine a diagnosis, which likely will be linked to biological causes.^[1][2] Medical professionals now define what is "normal" and what is "abnormal" in terms of biology and disability.^[3]

In some countries, the medical model of disability has influenced legislation and policy pertaining to persons with disabilities on a national level.^[5][6]

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), published in 2001, defines disability as an umbrella term for impairments, activity limitations and participation restrictions. Disability is the interaction between individuals with a health condition (such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and depression) and personal and environmental factors (such as negative attitudes, inaccessible transportation and public buildings, and limited social supports).^[7]

The altered language and words used show a marked change in emphasis from talking in terms of disease or impairment to talking in terms of levels of health and functioning. It takes into account the social aspects of disability and does not see disability only as a 'medical' or 'biological' dysfunction. That change is consistent with widespread acceptance of the social model of disability.^[8]

The medical model focuses on individual intervention and treatment as the proper approach to disability. Emphasis is placed on the biological expression of disability rather than on the systems and structures that can inhibit the lives of people with disabilities. Under the medical model, disabled bodies are defined as something to be corrected, changed, or cured. Terminology used can perpetuate negative labels such as deviant, pathological, and defective, thus, best understood in medical terms. The history and future of disability are severely constricted, focusing solely on medical implications and can overlook social constructions contributing to the experience of disability. Alternatively, the social model presents disability less as an objective fact of the body and mind, and positions it in terms of social relations and barriers that an individual may face in social settings.^[9]

It can influence the factors within the creation of medical or disability aides. Which can be reminiscent of hospital settings and institutions which can be traumatic to some who have spent and extended period of time there. Which can solely reflect the function of hospital aides but not necessarily the function of an aide outside of these contexts.^[10]

Among advocates of disability rights, who tend to subscribe to the social model instead, the medical model of disability is often cited as the basis of an unintended social degradation of disabled people (otherwise known as ableism).^[11] Resources are seen as excessively misdirected towards an almost-exclusively medical focus when those same resources could potentially be used towards things like universal design and societal inclusionary practices.^[12] This includes the monetary and societal costs and benefits of various interventions, be they medical, surgical, social or occupational, from prosthetics, drug-based and other "cures", and medical tests such as genetic screening or preimplantation genetic diagnosis. According to disability rights advocates, the medical model of disability is used to justify large investment in these procedures, technologies and research, when adaptation of the disabled person's environment could potentially be more beneficial to the society at large, as well as financially cheaper and physically more attainable.

Also, some disability rights groups see the medical model of disability as a civil rights issue and criticize charitable organizations or medical initiatives that use it in their portrayal of disabled people, because it promotes a pitiable, essentially negative, largely disempowered image of people with disabilities rather than casting disability as a political, social and environmental problem (see also the political slogan "Piss On Pity").

• Cure
• Medical model of autism
• Medicalization
• Models of deafness
• Neurodiversity

• The Open University: Making your teaching inclusive: The Medical Model