Disability Doesn’t Cause Abuse

I gerenally appreciate Harold Doherty of Facing Autism in New Brunswick for his advocacy for better adult autism services, particularly for those with the most severe disabilities. However, his most recent severe autism reality post had me rather up in arms. In short, Harold describes a situation in 2007 where a severely autistic woman was [...]

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The Drawbacks of Participation

The upcoming Disability Blog Carnival will be hosted on the theme of “participation”. Participation is a somewhat tricky subject for me, as I lost my ability to participate in the non-disabled world in many respects when I broke down in 2007. Before then, I’d been on the surface a successful example of inclusion, having graduated [...]

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Thoughts on “Disability Norm” and the Push Towards Community Living

Last week, Rachel Cohen-Rotenberg of Journeys with Autism wrote a post on visibility and human worth in the disability community, which discussed the overrated emphasis on achievements within a disability context, whereby people with severe disabilities or their carers/parents are ignored or outrightly silenced. Today, guestposter Claire posted about “disability norm” and some other problems [...]

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Social Communication Disorder Proposed for DSM-V

In late 2010, the DSM-V workgroup published draft criteria for social communication disorder. Social communication disorder (SCD) is an impairment of pragmatics and is diagnosed based on difficulty in the social uses of verbal and nonverbal communication in naturalistic contexts, which affects the development of social relationships and discourse comprehension. The pragmatic difficulties cannot be [...]

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18-Year-Old Man Restrained in Room for Three Years

I received an E-mail from my boyfriend alerting me to a news story from a Dutch television program. 18-year-old Brandon lives at ‘s Heeren Loo, a well-known institution for people with intellectual disabilities. There, he has been fixated to the wall of his room using a leash for three years consecutively. His room is empty [...]

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On Being Gifted and Disabled

I am what is politically correctly called twice-exceptional: intellectually gifted and disabled. The combination of these qualities has thrown me for quite a few challenges in my life. Mostly, it is impossible for most people to see both my intelligence and my disabilities, so they expect me to be either gifted or disabled, not both. [...]

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Disabled and Childfree: The Default Assumption

I am disabled and childfree, which means I choose not to have children. While the default assumption is that people my age will eventually have children, if they don’t have them already, this does not go for disabled peple: they, especially women, are automatically assumed to be childless, and the reason is supposed to be [...]

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PTSD in People with Intellectual Disabilities

When searching for studies on post-traumatic symptoms, I came across an interesting paper on PTSD among individuals with an intellectual disability (ID. This study is the first systematic review of prevalence, assessment and treatment of PTSD in people with ID. There are several reasons why people with intellectual disabilities are more susceptible to PTSD than [...]

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Institutionalized and Not Fighting to Get Out? You’re a Lousy Disability Rights Activist

Often, when institutionalization is discussed amongst disability activists, it is seen as both absolutely undesirable and something no-one would voluntarily choose over life in the community. I am a voluntarily institutionalized person, in the sense that I am an informal patient, and I am often looked upon with suspicion for thinking that an institution is [...]

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Disability Blog Carnival: Identity

Welcome to the September Disability Blog Carnival, which has identity as its theme. We have a varied collection of posts many different topics. Enjoy! Firstly, over at Hand to Mouth there is Words for Me: Assistive Technology, Identity, and Disability: At the moment I am spelling on my new input device with fingers that are [...]

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