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Discrimination against mentally and physically challenged
Discrimination against mentally and physically challenged
Essays on discrimination in mental health
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If you had something wrong with you, do you think your right of equality should be taken away? Thats what happened to my great aunt, Ann, who was mentally disabled. My mom recently shared a story and showed me a diary about Ann. When her family fought the doctor; when he (the doctor) told Ann’s mom she belongs in a institution, but they let love rule. It was a great accomplishment when Ann’s family brought Ann home.
Elizabeth Ann Pederson was born on July 18, 1951, in the Hibbing General Hospital. She weighed 6 pounds 14 ounces. She was welcomed into the family by her father and mother, Peter and Lydia, and her older brother Kenny. Ann had one extra finger that was removed shortly after she was born. She also had a birthmark on her heel. After I saw the birthmark, I wondered if there was something wrong with her, said Lydia. After five days in the hospital she went home. Ann’s home was in Buhl, Minnesota, where Ann lived all her 40 years and 10 months of her life. Soon the Pederson family found out that Ann was mentally disabled. They then had to fight society from that moment forward.
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In October Ann went to a Duluth hospital due to some feeding and weight problems, where they found out she was mentally disabled.
The doctor recommended putting Ann in an institution and forget about her. Suddenly, the load on our minds seemed insurmountable and the ache in our hearts, overwhelming, said Lydia. They took Ann home, but before they went, a nurse gave them a high protein formula ( Olac), an eye dropper and told them to feed her with the eye dropper. Ann’s parents decided to let love rule. It means, “ God gave them Ann, so accept it,” said my mom. “After Ann was brought home, many families in the community kept their mentally disabled children instead of putting them in a institution. The family also was affected by Ann, but they gave her a chance. Ann brought more work and more supervision,” said my mom.Also, Ann’s demands continued to be the greatest challenge, said
Lydia. No matter what someone's capabilities are they still should be given a chance at life. An example I took from this was when the doctor suggested they put Ann in the institution, and Ann’s parents wanted to give Ann a chance and brought her home. My mom recently shared a story about Ann, my mentally disabled Great Aunt, whose family fought the doctor when he told Ann’s mom she belonged in a institution. This was a great accomplishment. Now I think that it's important to let love rule, and anyone should be given a chance. Ann’s parents did when they brought Ann home instead of putting her in a institution.
Everyone should be treated equally, should get support and care equally. “Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.” is a true story published on Mother Jones on May-June 2013 issue (non profit organization article) by Mac McClelland. McClelland was formerly Mother Jones’ human rights reporter and writer of “The Rights Stuff”. In it she, talks about her cousin Houston, who had mental illness and at his age of 22 he stabbed his father 60 times with four different knives. Mac McClelland’s aunt Terri also suffered from mental illness at the age of 16. Aunt Terri and Houston were diagnosed with schizophrenia, a brain disorder in which people see reality abnormally. McClelland’s thesis states that well staffed hospital and properly administered antipsychotic medications would have helped Houston like how it did for Terri. The
Forcing someone to take medication or be hospitalized against their will seems contrary to an individual’s right to refuse medical treatment, however, the issue becomes complicated when it involves individuals suffering from a mental illness. What should be done when a person has lost their grasp on reality, or if they are at a risk of harming themselves or others? Would that justify denying individuals the right to refuse treatment and issuing involuntary treatment? Numerous books and articles have been written which debates this issue and presents the recommendations of assorted experts.
O’ Connor was born the only child to her parents in Savannah, Georgia. Her father was a real estate agent and her mother was born into a very prominent family. When O’ Connor was twelve years old, her family moved back to her mothers hometown of Milledgeville, GA where her father was also the mayor of for a couple of years. Milledgeville was known as the ‘crazy’ town in Georgia. Milledgeville was home to one of the largest mental institutions in the United States. At the time this story was written, the hospital had 13,000 mentally ill patients hospitalized there. She was surrounded by crazy people. The influence of living in Milledgeville helped her in writing her stories.
In contrast to the powerful Robert Neville is the young and innocent, 16 year old Ann Burden. She too suffers from the reality that she may be the only person left alive on the face of the earth. Unlike Robert who lives in the city, Ann lives out on a small farm property in the countryside of America; which is a short distance from the local town, Ogdentown. It was to this town her family ventured in search of life and supplies, but never returned. Luckily Ann is self-sufficient and is able to run her f...
As time goes on, the law has put more emphasis on facility just like Bridgewater State Hospital in which many of the actions of the facility workers can face legal consequences such as facing prison time, fines, lawsuits, and etc. Society has a better understanding of why certain people act the way that they do and being more knowledgeable about psychology and mental diseases allows us to have a different approach when dealing with these topics or these individuals. In today’s era, there are many normal individuals who are willing to stand up for those who do not have a voice of their own. I believe that this change in one’s ability to stand up for another individual or group of individuals is what brought about change to the medical environment of those who are mentally
Margaret Sanger was born on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. She was the daughter of two Irish Catholic parents who had eleven children in total. She witnessed the struggles that having a large family brought upon all aspects of her childhood, specifically her mother’s neverending stress. Sanger later attributed her mother’s death at the ripe age of 50 from tuberculosis to the strain of having eleven children and s...
Growing up Emily was an all-around vibrant girl. Over time, she becomes a secretive old woman. In a “A Rose for Emily, “she was described as shuttered, dusty, and dark just like the outside of her home. She inherited mental illness from her father side. “She exhibits the qualities of the stereotypical southern “eccentric”: unbalanced, excessively tragic, and subject of a bizarre behavior” (SparkNotes Editors 2007, pg 4). When her father passed away, she refused to give up his body. In all, Emily is a scared soul whose loneliness and co-dependent upbringing let her to remain socially unfit, and unable to make healthy human connections (Enotes, 2016 pg 1). Her upbringing slowly affected her ability to function like the rest of the townspeople. The townspeople never labeled her with a mental illness, but she was constantly talked about because of the relationship she had with Homer, and curiosity of the way Emily was living got the best of the
She suffered long-term physical, emotional, sexual, and verbal abuse from her parents; symptoms from her personal oppression were depressive and withdrawn attitude. Often she was very quiet and appeared unengaged and inattentive in class. The family lives in a public housing subsidy tenement and received public assistance from the State. Her first child, who she called "Mongo", because she was born with a disease called Down syndrome, lived with her grandmother, but on days the social worker would visit the grandmother would bring the child by to visit. Though the grandmother was very aware of the abuse that was taking place in the home, she turned a blind eye.
Interestingly, the Medical Model of disability starkly contrasts how other forms of discrimination are typically viewed in society. For example, most individuals believe that the social ailments surrounding racial and ethnic minorities, women, and sexual minorities stem not from any sort of physiological abnormality, but rather from societal environments that breed discrimination. Thus, discrimination against these minority groups are often viewed as unreasonable. Moreover, attempts at justifying the discrimination against any of these groups is deemed socially deplorable. In contrast, many people seem to view discrimination against disabled individuals as not only rational, but also morally acceptable (in the RGT context specifically). The result, therefore, is that individuals who strive against discrimination in other contexts may be apt to justify discrimination against disabled
This quote is exactly what I am going to describe to you. Everyone deserves to be treated the same way Just as we have had to accept people around the world that are different race. We also have to accept people who are suffering with mental disabilities. In this paper I’ll go over a few things that happened in the 20th century. These things made it, so people with disabilities can be able to work, get an education, and live on their own.
Since there are few regulations and a general lack of state presence in the mental health community, there is a lot of room for error and potential discrimination. On television and in the media we hear the horror stories of nurses manipulating and abusing patients to gain a twisted sense of superiority. Even though some of the stories in the media can be extreme, a majority of patients feel like they have been discriminated against while being treated, in fact “Many patients who seek help for mental health problems report feeling ‘patronized, punished or humiliated’ in their dealings with health professionals” (Christina Pellegrini, 2014). Walking into a health care facility, one expects to get fair, nondiscriminatory treatment, yet many patients feel as if they were punished or humiliated for seeking treatment. This feeling of denigration “[includes] negativity about a patient’s chance of recovery, misattribution of unrelated complaints to a patient’s mental illness and refusal to treat psychiatric symptoms in a medical setting”(2014). While patients are being treated, they are also being scrutinized, and treated as inferior just for having a mental condition. Even while having minimal access around the country to mental health treatment, the treatment itself is plagued with malpractice. This raises many questions about the mental health care systems, as well as the human rights that the patients are entitled to as human beings. While in a hospital, no one should feel like they’re being shamed or patronized because of their condition, regardless of the medical ailment. No matter the stance on this issue, for or against human rights, people in the mental health community deserve to have fair (meaning nonabusive and accessible)
Do you believe that an individual with a learning disability, or a coma patient, or a person who has been institutionalized all their life has any less right to life than you or I? How about drug addicts, soldiers who come back with PTSD and struggle with emotional issues, or people who commit vehicular manslaughter on a snowy, dark night? These individuals either at fault or not, but no one would doubt they all have the right to a life. There are no exceptions to the rule, and there is no reason anyone’s right should be stripped
As we have clearly seen, medicine for profit is not solving the problems of the healthcare system and many people are going bankrupt, dying, and choosing suicide over costly bills. Maybe we should learn from all of these situations and numbers and see that, like the UK did, we should be looking at ways to expand our basic human rights to include healthcare. The question at hand was is healthcare a right or a privilege, reviewing all facts, and data given you will see that Health Care in the United States is a privilege. It seems very vile to have resources, and services to deny a person who has a curable illness or disease, because they don’t have proper health care. However, this is the society we live in where liberty and justice for all comes before healthcare for all.
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
Every day in America, a woman loses a job to a man, a homosexual high school student suffers from harassment, and someone with a physical or mental disability is looked down upon. People with disabilities make up the world’s largest and most disadvantaged minority, with about 56.7 million people living with disabilities in the United States today (Barlow). In every region of the country, people with disabilities often live on the margins of society, deprived from some of life’s fundamental experiences. They have little hope of inclusion within education, getting a job, or having their own home (Cox). Everyone deserves a fair chance to succeed in life, but discrimination is limiting opportunities and treating people badly because of their disability. Whether born from ignorance, fear, misunderstanding, or hate, society’s attitudes limit people from experiencing and appreciating the full potential a person with a disability can achieve. This treatment is unfair, unnecessary, and against the law (Purdie). Discrimination against people with disabilities is one of the greatest social injustices in the country today. Essential changes are needed in society’s basic outlook in order for people with disabilities to have an equal opportunity to succeed in life.