The History of Disability

Volunteering at Passion Works this week, I couldn't think of what to write about. I tried to make up lists of the artists' favorite movies and such, but thought it trivial. After some time reflecting, however, I've decided to examine the history of developmental disability, and disability in general. After breezing through a Wikipedia article, I came to a particularly interesting section:

The segregation of people with developmental disabilities wasn't widely questioned by academics or policy-makers until the 1969 publication of Wolf Wolfensberger's seminal work "The Origin and Nature of Our Institutional Models",^[13] drawing on some of the ideas proposed by SG Howe a hundred years earlier. This book posited that society characterises people with disabilities as deviant, sub-human and burdens of charity, resulting in the adoption of that 'deviant' role. Wolfensberger argued that this dehumanisation, and the segregated institutions that result from it, ignored the potential productive contributions that all people can make to society. He pushed for a shift in policy and practice that recognised the human needs of "retardates" and provided the same basic human rights as for the rest of the population.

The publication of this book may be regarded as the first move towards the widespread adoption of the social model of disability in regard to these types of disabilities, and was the impetus for the development of government strategies for desegregation. Successful lawsuits against governments and an increasing awareness of human rights and self-advocacy also contributed to this process, resulting in the passing in the US of the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act in 1980.

This change in perception reminded me of one that occurred with homosexuality in the '70s, in which the orientation was removed from the Diagnostic Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). What I wonder is, why has it taken society so long to recognize that people are people?

See below for a timeline of significant events when it comes to disability.

Disabilities on Dipity.

Source

As you can see, we've come a long way.