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Medical model of disability
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==Criticism== {{further|Social model of disability}} The medical model focuses on individual intervention and treatment as the proper approach to disability. Emphasis is placed on the biological expression of disability rather than on the systems and structures that can inhibit the lives of people with disabilities. Under the medical model, disabled bodies are defined as something to be corrected, changed, or cured. Terminology used can perpetuate negative labels such as deviant, pathological, and defective, thus, best understood in medical terms. The history and future of disability are severely constricted, focusing solely on medical implications and can overlook social constructions contributing to the experience of disability. Alternatively, the social model presents disability less as an objective fact of the body and mind, and positions it in terms of social relations and barriers that an individual may face in social settings.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kafer |first1=Alison |title=Feminist, queer, crip |year=2013 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0253009340}}</ref> The medical model of disability can influence the factors within the creation of medical or disability aides, such as creating aides reminiscent of hospital settings and institutions which can be traumatic to some who have spent an extended period of time there, or which solely reflect the function of hospital aides but not necessarily the function of an aide outside of these contexts.<ref>{{Citation |last=Barton |first=Len |title=Sociology and disability: some emerging issues |date=1996 |work=Disability and Society |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315841984-2/sociology-disability-emerging-issues-len-barton |access-date=2024-04-11 |publisher=Routledge |doi=10.4324/9781315841984-2 |isbn=978-1-315-84198-4|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Among advocates of [[disability rights]], who tend to subscribe to the [[social model of disability|social model]] instead, the medical model of disability is often cited as the basis of an unintended social [[wikt:degradation|degradation]] of disabled people (otherwise known as [[ableism]]).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Dirth |first1=Thomas P. |last2=Branscombe |first2=Nyla R. |title=Disability Models Affect Disability Policy Support through Awareness of Structural Discrimination: Models of Disability |journal=Journal of Social Issues |date=June 2017 |volume=73 |issue=2 |pages=413β442 |doi=10.1111/josi.12224}}</ref> Resources are seen as excessively misdirected towards an almost-exclusively medical focus when those same resources could potentially be used towards things like [[universal design]] and [[inclusion (disability rights)|societal inclusionary practices]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Goering |first1=Sara |title=Rethinking disability: the social model of disability and chronic disease |journal=Current Reviews in Musculoskeletal Medicine |date=June 2015 |volume=8 |issue=2 |pages=134β138 |doi=10.1007/s12178-015-9273-z |pmid=25862485 |pmc=4596173 }}</ref> This includes the monetary and societal costs and benefits of various interventions, be they medical, surgical, social or occupational, from [[prosthetics]], drug-based and other cures, and medical tests such as genetic screening or [[preimplantation genetic diagnosis]]. According to disability rights advocates, the medical model of disability is used to justify large investment in these procedures, technologies and research, when adaptation of the disabled person's environment could potentially be more beneficial to the society at large, as well as financially cheaper and physically more attainable. Also, some disability rights groups see the medical model of disability as a [[civil rights]] issue and criticize [[charitable organizations]] or medical initiatives that use it in their portrayal of disabled people, because it promotes a [[pity|pitiable]], essentially negative, largely [[disempowered]] image of people with disabilities rather than casting disability as a political, social and environmental problem (see also the [[political slogan]] "[[Piss On Pity]]").
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