Medical model of disability

The medical model of disability and the medical view of disability is a socio-political model in which illness or disability is the result of physical conditions and is inseparable from the person ( it is part of one's body ) can reduce the individual quality of life and significant disadvantages for individuals caused.

It will be now explicitly referred to as " medical model " of disability because of the high degree to be highlighted in the medical solutions, such as surgery, orthotics and clinical physiotherapy and as the path to the greatest possible " normalization" of the participation of a disabled person in society favors. When it is referred to as " medical model ", rather than simply as a standard model of disability ( as it once was ), the intent is usually to make the contrast with the alternative model, the social model of disability.

In medical point of view there is a tendency to believe it go at ' healing ' or at least 'Management' of illness or disability, to the vast and complete identification of the illness or disability of an in-depth clinical perspective (in the sense of scientific understanding by trained health personnel ) and attempts to understand illness or disability, they control to learn and / or to change its course.

In a broader sense, it is believed in the medical model and that a compassionate or just society resources in health care and related services invested as an attempt of the medical cure of disability in order to extend the functionality and / or to improve the function and thus disabled to enable people to live a normal life. The responsibility and the potential of the medical professional is attributed central importance in this area.

From the advocates of the rights of disabled people, who tend to prefer the social model to the medical model of disability, the medical model is often used as the basis for an undesirable social demotion of people referred with disabilities; Furthermore, they see resources as excessive misdirected almost exclusively medical focus, because the same resources for things like universal design and inclusion measures could be used.

This includes the monetary and social costs and benefits of different interventions, whether medical, surgical, social or professional, to drug of prosthetics, and other remedies and medical tests, such as genetic screening or pre-implantation diagnosis.

Often a medical model of disability is used to justify large investment projects, technology and research. If the environment of the disabled person would be adjusted, this could ultimately be cheaper, both for society as a whole, as well as cost-effective and practically more feasible.

Furthermore see some disability rights groups, the medical model of disability as a problem of civil rights and criticize charitable or medical initiatives that use it in their portrayal of disabled people, because it promotes a pitiful, essentially negative, mainly powerless image of people with disabilities, rather than disability to accept as a political, social and ecological problem (see also the political slogan " Piss on pity " - " Piss on pity ").

Various sociologists ( Zola, Parsons ) studied the socio - cultural aspects of "normality" and its adaptation pressure.

The recent ICF classification ( International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health ) of the World Health Organization considers the social aspects of disability and sees disability not only as a medical or biological malfunction.