Mental Health Needs Essay Paper

This essay will explore the different forms of empowerment in relation to people with disabilities. Firstly it will define what is meant by disability and will then look at what empowerment is. The essay will look at the difference between empowerment and advocacy and will explain about enabling and disabling environments. The second part of the essay will examine four case studies in relation to the enabling environment. These case studies are part of a service called the enabling project provided by PSS in Liverpool to allow disabled people to access the environment.Mental Health Needs Essay Paper

This part will establish whether or not the clients see this service as enabling or disabling and whether they are empowered by the service that they are receiving. When many people try to define disability they confuse it with the person being in ill health. Disability depends on the environment that the person is in and upon who is doing that defining. The DDA’s definition of disability is “Either a physical or mental impairment, which has a substantial and long term adverse effect on a persons ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. ” (Curtis 1996 pg23).

For many years disability and disabled people have been the financial stability for many people involved within the caring profession. In the 1970s, disabled people used their personal experiences of disability and institutional life to show that it wasn’t their impairments, which caused the problem, but it was the way in which society failed to make any allowances for their differences. This was what was known as The Social Model of Disability. This model discusses and analyses disability. It explains disablement is the result of barriers, which prevent people with impairments choosing to take part in the society.

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This has allowed the perception of disability to be seen as a problem. The disability rights movement sort to inform people of the lack of rights that a disabled person faced in every day life. The social model doesn’t disagree that there is an existence of impairments and physiological differences but instead it tries to address those differences without attaching the stigmatising effects of disablement that often also reaches beyond the disabled person but brings disadvantage to their friends and family.Mental Health Needs Essay Paper

The Disability Discrimination Act says that the inability to carry out activities is caused by a person’s impairment or impairments. For example, you are not able to walk because of your impairment or impairments this is what is known as medical model of disability because the causes of disability are attributed only to the disabled persons medical conditions. The Act specifies that a person has a disability if she or he has a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long term effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day to day activities if it affects one or more of the following:

Mobility of a person  Physical co-ordination  Manual dexterity  Ability to lift, carry or move everyday objects  Continence Eyesight (unless it is rectified by glasses or contact lenses)  Hearing  Speech  Memory or ability to concentrate or learn or understand  Perception of the risk and danger. The social model does not limit the description of activities. It takes a wider perspective that the ability to undertake such activities is dependent upon society and social intervention.

It can therefore be seen that the limitation of activities that a disabled person can participate in is not caused by their impairments but is a consequence of societies in ability to accommodate difference. Hence this is why it is called social model of disability. For example, you are in a wheelchair because you can not walk (impairment): but you cannot access buildings because the building has not been designed with your need in mind. You cannot get through the door because they are not wide enough (you are disabled by a failure of social organisation). However this has to be changed by law by 2004.Mental Health Needs Essay Paper

Part M of the Buildings Regulation Act states that every new building should be built with disabled access and that every other building should be adapted accordingly. Because the medical model uses impairment to account for disability, it can therefore be said that disability is the persons inability to participate because of that persons impairment or impairments, means that people with impairments will always be seen as being inferior, or second rate to the non disabled person. The social model focuses on those aspects of society, which disable people face such as discrimination and disability.Mental Health Needs Essay Paper