Chapter Summary: Constructing Disability and Illness
In Chapter 14, "Constructing Disability and Illness," Rioux and Daly consider the theoretical distinctions between treating disability as an individual or a social pathology - the two dominant discourses in Canadian medicine. In the case of individual pathologies, this seems to be shared by biomedical and functional accounts of disability, as they liken it to illness. However, in the case of social pathologies, disability is separate from illness; at the same time, the social disadvantages that the disabled experience due to their impairment is of grave concern.
Disability is often equated with illness from a structural perspective; since many biomedical interests tend to frame disability as something that should be fixed through medical interventions, the responsibility of fixing the situation falls to the individual and their desire and ability to seek care. However, with the social construct and pathology, societal determinants and interventions seek to provide rights and privileges to the disabled, to enable them to have free and fulfilling lives despite their disability. Instead of treating it like an illness, the fact of the disability is embraced. In the case of Canada, disability is very prevalent, and individual pathologies must be tempered with social pathologies in order to provide them the rights they deserve. Health care professionals are often the gatekeepers to disability benefits, when it should be social groups that offer those benefits (to limit disability being likened to illness). Disability is, instead, a social disadvantage that must be compensated for. Therefore, policy-making should be framed more toward a rights outcome approach, so that disability is not merely considered a temporary medical problem to be solved.
