The Importance of Disabilities Awareness
Disabilities Awareness has played an important role in my life. My present interest in it grew out of my early involvement as a child. In elementary school I was given the chance to serve as a student judge for disabilities awareness art contests sponsored by the NYS Commission on Quality of Care. Children from schools all across New York State were asked to send in drawings to express their personal message of equality and acceptance of people with disabilities. It was frightening to see how many drawings inadvertently depicted a negative message instead of the positive one called for by the contest guidelines. Later I experienced the same feeling when I judged a disabilities awareness writing contest and read many of the entries submitted by middle school students.
After seeing so many negative representations of people with disabilities, I decided I wanted to do something to help change the common misconceptions the general public had. I started to take notice of the challenges that people with disabilities faced every day. Some of them were concrete problems like the inaccessibility of buildings and the lack of accessible public transportation. I began to notice where people with disabilities couldn't go. I began to see that some of the worst challenges they faced, however, were attitude problems like the endless teasing or using the names of different disabilities as insults. I began to notice how people communicated (or failed to communicate) with disabled people. I observed that people thought someone with a disability was only a disability, therefore less human, and inferior to us. Expectations were low for them and they were more often sitting alone in a school cafeteria or not included in social events after school.
I hoped that my involvement in a New York State publication like the Disabilities Awareness Newsletter would help correct some of the misconceptions and lack of information I observed in my own world. I began to write articles that centered around positive accomplishments achieved by active members of our community who happen to have a disability.
Depression is an illness within itself that affects the “whole body”. (Staywell,1998) The body, feelings, thoughts, and behavior are all immensely altered when someone is depressed. It is not a sign of personal weakness, or a condition that can be wished or willed away. For some people depression is just temporary, but for others it can last for weeks, months and even years.
Clinical depression, which affects about 10% of the adult population (Holtz, Stokes, 1138), is charact...
Depression is considered a mental disorder that can lead an individual to commit suicide, experiment fatal risk that can injure his or her life. Furthermore, an individual feeling depressed lacks motivation to do anything progressive with his or her life. With that said, these individuals sometime gives up interest in activities that were once enjoyable, gets in a phase were he or she loses appetite, begins to overeat, loses concentration on what he or she is trying to complete, and becomes indecisiveness. Moreover, depression is a condition that makes an individual feel miserable, have no motivation to any activity that can influence his or her views, actions, welfare. Furthermore, depressed individuals at times may feel sad, apprehensive, desperate, destitute, useless, awkward, short-tempered, and agitated. In addition, the melancholy of depression is categorized by a greater concentration and length that is attached to severe symptoms. According to Wedding & Corsini (2014) states, “Physical disease, severe and acute stress, and chronic stress area also precipitating factors” (Pp. 240) of an individu...
‘“Now it’s my turn to make it better for generations that come after, which is why I’ve become, involved in disabilities issues”’ (Open University, 2016a).
During the recent years, words like attention deficit, hyperactivity, ADD etc. have been quite frequently used among various psychiatric and educational institutes. These words have been making its rounds among most educators, physicians, psychologists and young parents in the society nowadays. A few decades ago people were oblivious of these terms or only a few people had heard these terminologies and had experienced children in a class or any other related place behaving in abnormal ways which included fidgeting, restlessness or having very low attention span.
Bibliography Baliey, W.J. Attention Deficit Disorder. 9 May 1997. Online Internet. 10 November 2000. http://www.execpc.com/~calliope/ Clark, C.G. Children Who Can’t Pay Attention. 5 October 1998. Online Internet. 10 November 2000. http://www.aacap.org/publications/factsfam/noattent.htm Hallahan, Daniel & Kuaffman, James. Exceptional Child. 1999. Online Internet. 10 November 2000. http://borntoexplore.org/ Hallowell, Edward M. & Ratley, John J. Driven to Distraction. 13 April 1997. Online Internet. 10 November 2000. http://www.livingwithadd.com/ Wender, Pual H. M.D. The Hyperactive Child, Adolescent, and Adult. 15 November 1998. Online Interent. 10 November 2000. http://www.attn-deficit-disorder.com/ Weiss, Lynn M.D. Attention Deficit Disorder in Adults. 4 January 1999. Online Interent. 10 November 2000. http://www.mentalhealth.com/dis/p20-ch01.html
All throughout Elementary school teachers and parents would say, “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you”, but in a way they were wrong. My father married my step-mother who had two children around my age. The oldest was a very normal kid, but the second was autistic. Despite his autism, he was a very sweet kid and when it came to the subject of animals he was a genius, however this made no difference to his peers. He would be referred to as “retard” or other hurtful names behind his back. His brother, himself, and myself all went to the same school and his brother and I would have to deal with these immature students. They would pick on him constantly, but the saddest part is he could never tell that they were picking on him; in his mind he thought that was how everyone played. I would have to talk to these students, but they never understood the problem, “he can’t tell” or “he’s having fun” they would say. In no way does that make it right. Just because someone can’t tell that you are picking on them or doesn’t hear you say the hurtful comments, shouldn’t allow you to disrespect them.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD as it is more commonly referred to, is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as an anxiety disorder. (American Psychological Association.) It has specific criteria that need to be met in order to be diagnosed. Foremost there needs to be a traumatic event of some kind. Examples of such events are as follows. Being involved in a situation where there was death or near death, sexual assault, or physical harm. There have also been cases were the stressor was second hand. Such as harm that happened to a close family member. People who have PTSD can exhibit a myriad of symptoms. Symptoms include flashbacks, which are a vivid recollection of the event. As well as anxiety resulting from recall of unwanted memories of the event. Many also experience a heightened sense of awareness known as hyperarousal, a state in which the body is prepared to respond to a threat.
The Moving Beyond Pity & Inspiration: Disability as a social Justice Issue by Eli Clare took place on April 16, 2014. Thinking about disability before this lecture I feel like I had a general idea of the things Eli spoke about. I attended a school were more than half of the students had a disability. The terms and stereotypes he mentioned I ha heard since sixth grade.
Clinical depression is very common. Over nine million Americans are diagnosed with clinical depression at some point in their lives. Many more people suffer from clinical depression because they do not seek treatment. They may feel that depression is a personal weakness, or try to cope with their symptoms alone. On the other hand, some people are comfortable with admitting their symptoms and seeking help. Such a discrepancy may account for the differences in reported cases of depression between men and women, which indicate that more than twice the numbers of women than men are clinically depressed. According to the numbers of reported cases of depression, 25% of women and 10% of men will have one or more episodes of clinical depression during their lifetimes.
There is no known single cause of autism. Researchers are investigating a number of possible theories including genetics, heredity, medical problems, problems during pregnancy or delivery, as well as environmental influences. It is widely accepted that it is caused by abnormalities in the brain structure or function. There is evidence from neuropathological studies that autism has its origins in abnormal brain development early in prenatal life which continues postnatally, showing acceleration in brain growth measured by head circumference (Zwaigenbaum, L., Bryson, S., Rogers, T., Roberts, W., Brian, J., & Szatmari, P., 2005). The disorder also seems to have a genetic basis, although researchers have yet to find the specific genes that link to the onset of autism. There could be a cluster of genes that have somehow interfered with normal brain development and function. Studies show that twins of children with autism were more likely to be autistic themselves than the regular population, demonstrating there is a heredity lin...
Simpson, C. (2007) ‘Mental Health part3: Assessment and Treatment of Depression’ British Journal of Healthcare assistants. pp 167-171.
Depression is a serious mental health illness which affects an individuals’ mind, body and mood. It is a chronic and lifelong health condition (NICE, 2006) thought to be caused by a number of biological factors including neurotransmitter disturbances in the brain and an element of genetic vulnerability; these are often in addition to psychosocial factors such as the occurrence of undesirable life events, limited social network options, poor self esteem and the occurrence of any adverse life events during a persons’ lifetime (Bernstein, 2006). Depression can have an impact on a persons’ ability to do many things including working, engaging with others, participating fully in family life or maintaining relationships, and it can also impact on a person...
Beck, A. (1978). Cognitive therapy of depression (The Guildford Clinical Psychology and psychopathology series). New York, N.Y : Guildford Press.
Furthermore, television violence causes aggressive behavior in children. Many people believe that children who watch violent television programs exhibit more aggressive behavior than that exhibited by children who do not (Kinnear 23). According to the results of many studies and reports, violence on television can lead to aggressive behavior in children (Langone 50). Also, when television was introduced into a community of children for the first time, researchers observed a rise in the level of physical and verbal aggression among these children (Langone 51). The more television violence viewed by a child, the more aggressive the child is (“Children” 1).