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The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the views and attitudes that psychiatrists have about recovery colleges (RCs).

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten psychiatrists from the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust.

Psychiatrists had a strong concept of the RC model, and were broadly positive about it, recognising many benefits. Various challenges were also acknowledged including how the RC model interacts with the medical model.

This is the first known study to explore solely the psychiatrists’ views of RCs, a group who are likely to be particularly influential within services. The sample was relatively unexposed to RCs, enabling insight into how the RC is perceived by those outside of its functioning as well as the state of wider organisational support, which is important for the success of RCs.

Creating more positive individual narratives around illness and identity is at the heart of the mental health care recovery movement. Some recovery services explicitly use personal storytelling as an intervention. The purpose of this paper is to look at individual experiences of a personal storytelling intervention, a recovery college Telling My Story (TMS) course.

Eight participants who had attended the TMS course offered at a UK recovery college were interviewed. Data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Five key themes, namely a highly emotional experience, feeling safe to disclose, renewed sense of self, two-way process and a novel opportunity, were emerged.

The findings suggest that storytelling can be a highly meaningful experience and an important part of the individual’s recovery journey. They also begin to identify elements of the storytelling process which might aid recovery, and point to pragmatic setting conditions for storytelling interventions to be helpful. More time could be dedicated to individuals telling their story within UK mental health services, and the authors can use this insight into the experience of personal storytelling to guide any future developments.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the work of sociologists who laid the foundation for queer and crip approaches to disability and to address how queer and crip theory has and can help to re-conceptualize our understandings of health, illness, disability, and sexuality.

This paper is an examination of historical moments and prominent literature within medical sociology and sociology of disability. Sociological and popular understandings of disability and sexuality have often mirrored each other historically. Although this literature review focuses primarily on medical sociology and disability studies literature, some works of scholars specializing in gender studies, sexuality, literature, history, and queer studies are also included

In this paper, I argue that the medicalization and pathologization of human differences specifically as it pertains to sexuality and disability within the medical sociological literature have led to constructionist, social model, and feminist critiques. It is these critiques that then laid the foundation for the development of queer and crip theoretical approaches to both disability and sexuality.

Crip and queer approaches to disability provide a clear call for future sociological research. Few social science scholars have applied queer and crip approaches in empirical studies on disability. The majority of work in this area is located in the humanities and concerned with literary criticism. A broader array of empirical work on the intersection of sexuality and disability from queer/crip perspectives is needed both to refine these postmodern theoretical models and to examine their implications for the complex lived experience that lies at the intersection of sexuality and disability. In queering disability and cripping sexuality and gender, we may be able not only to more fully conceptualize disability, sexuality, and gender as individual social categories, but also to more fully understand the complex intersection of these social locations.

This chapter explores the relationship between disability identity, civil rights, and the law. Twenty-five years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the question remains why disability rights legislation does not go far enough toward addressing access, stigma, and discrimination issues. People with disabilities have found empowerment from disability rights laws, but these laws are also restrictive because they define people in relation to medical aspects of their disabilities and narrowly define society’s obligation for inclusion. The successes and failures of disability rights laws are an important contribution to the study of conceptions of difference.

Purpose – This chapter examines the relationship between prenatal testing, Down syndrome identification, and selective termination practices, and it does so by considering whether the selective termination of fetuses with Down syndrome might constitute genocidal practices.

Methodology/approach – Exploratory and speculative in nature, this chapter brings the phenomenon of prenatal testing and selective termination practices together, and explores whether the increasingly widespread termination of fetuses with Down syndrome fits within definitions of genocide.

Findings – Addressing perceptions of Down syndrome and disability, and integrating aspects of crip politics and definitions of genocide, this chapter concludes that the phenomenon of selective termination involving fetuses with Down syndrome can constitute genocide when particular definitions and interpretations are adopted.

Originality/value – This chapter is perhaps the first academic text to critically evaluate the relationship between prenatal testing, selective termination of fetuses with Down syndrome, and criminological genocide scholarship. Importantly, it does not evaluate individual decision-making practices regarding termination, but instead focuses on collective practices and conditions that work to minimize the number of people with Down syndrome in society.

This chapter reviews qualitative research on parenting children with disabilities published over the last 50 years to explore whether shifts in academic discourse and changes in professional training have affected research on parenting and/or the experiences of parents who are the subject of such research.

An extensive literature search was conducted, and 78 peer-reviewed, qualitative studies on the experience of parenting a child with a disability were included in the sample. Themes were extracted from the reviewed literature and compared across decades.

The findings of the present review suggest that some aspects of the parenting experience have changed very little. In particular, parents continue to experience negative reactions such as stress and anomie, especially early in their children’s lives, and socially imposed barriers such as unhelpful professionals, and a lack of needed services continue to create problems and inspire an entrepreneurial response. In addition, stigmatizing encounters with others continue to be a common occurrence. In contrast to earlier decades, studies conducted in more recent years have begun to use the social model of disability as an analytic frame and also increasingly report that parents are questioning and challenging the concept of “normal” itself.

Additional improvements are needed in professional education and services to reduce the negative reactions experienced by parents of children with disabilities.

The findings of this meta-analysis can serve as a guide to future research on parenting children with disabilities.

Previous quantitative research documents that college students with disabilities do not attain higher education at rates equal to their nondisabled peers. This qualitative study posits that socioeconomic status (SES) is a determinant of this discrepancy, and explores how SES and disability shape the college experience of New York City (NYC) students with learning disabilities (LDs), specifically.

Research findings from semi-structured interviews with students with LDs (n = 10) at a low-SES and a high-SES colleges are presented against the backdrop of administrative data from NYC baccalaureate-granting colleges (n = 44), disability staff surveys (n = 21), and disability staff interviews (n = 9). Examined through the lens of political economy, qualitative data demonstrate the ways colleges create environments that enable or hinder student success through difference in policy implementation.

Student themes like stress, identity, and entitlement are discussed against the theoretical and empirical exploration of the intersectionality of SES and disability. Socioeconomic differences are linked to variation in students’ college choice, accessing evaluations, requesting accommodations, and receiving supplementary supports.

The reduction in public services since 2008 has undoubtedly affected some groups, such as disabled people, more than others. Many of these cuts, ostensibly imposed in response to recession, bear similarities to measures previously tried and tested on disabled asylum seekers. I argue that the perception of national crisis was used by government as a smokescreen to expand the population affected by such policies, thereby asserting a predetermined neoliberal agenda of public expenditure cuts.

The inequality of this situation is compounded by the entitlements granted to people deemed exceptionally worthy. The Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme for Syrian nationals includes disability among the eligibility criteria, offering considerably greater entitlements than available to asylum seekers. If the response to certain people is markedly different to that offered to others, then negative consequences can be anticipated, as from any other example of inequality. Furthermore, this scheme promotes a significant shift in migrant entitlement. The UK government has no legal obligation towards this group; therefore, those people who are selected are recipients of gifts rather than people claiming their rights. I explore the nature and implications of such differences in entitlement, arguing that inequality in all its manifestations must be challenged to reduce deprivation and to avoid negative consequences for the wider population.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the preventable harm created by the adoption of austerity measures in 2010, added to the welfare reforms introduced in 2008 which, collectively, have negative implications for population mental health in the UK.

A critical reflection of published research papers and key policy documents in this area.

Negative mental health consequences of the combined impact of welfare reforms and austerity measures in the UK since 2010 are identified when relating to disability benefit assessments, and to the increased punitive conditionality applied to disability benefit claimants, as those in greatest need now live in fear of making a claim for financial support from the state or of losing benefits to which they are entitled.

This paper identifies the creation of preventable harm by social policy reforms, commonly known as “welfare reforms”. The implications for social scientists are the disregard of academic peer-reviewed social policy research by policymakers, and the adoption of critically challenged policy-based research as used to justify political objectives.

The negative mental health impact of UK government social policy reforms has been identified and highlights the human consequences of the adoption of the biopsychosocial model of assessment.

Reducing the numbers of sick and disabled people claiming long-term disability benefit has increased the numbers claiming unemployment benefit, with no notable increase in the numbers of disabled people in paid employment and with many service users in greatest need living in fear of the next enforced disability assessment.

This paper demonstrates the preventable harm created by the use of a flawed disability assessment model, together with the adoption of punitive conditionality and the increased suicides linked to UK welfare reforms which are influenced by American social policies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and comment on disability rights legislation by focusing on international documents on people with impairments of the last decades, in order to provide more information on the dynamics of the disability rights movement and their moral plea for full inclusion.

By analyzing the international legislation and most important guidelines with respect to people with impairments, it is possible to portray a socio-political change by unfolding the agenda of the historical dimension of the decisive events.

The long and difficult struggle of people with impairments to beneficiaries of full human rights protection is a fundamental socio-political change that is documented by adhering to important international legislation and guidelines.

The examination of recent international legislation with respect to people with impairments provides historical context for current developments in the context of disability and full inclusion by conceding human rights as their moral and legal foundation.