- Caroline Mawer, ill health retired doctor and person with multimorbidity
- caroline.mawer{at}gmail.com
Jackson makes great points about how meeting the challenges of disability is the collective responsibility of society.1 Ensuring physical accessibility to health services would be a great start. Begging strangers for help with the automatically closing doors on the so-called accessible toilets in a hospital is a humiliating example of the invisible work that disabled people have to do.2
Clinicians are there for many of the events and procedures that imply or lead to disability. But simply establishing a diagnosis or even an effective treatment plan is often nowhere near enough.3
So let’s try to be more specific:
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People are not either disabled or “normal”4
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Disabled people are often impressively resilient and smart. We manage multiple conditions 24/7, whereas “our” specialist might be thinking about one of our conditions for 30 minutes a year
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There’s huge diversity within the disabled community. Intersectionality—other forms of inequality or disadvantage—multiplies the challenges5
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Please don’t assume that our disabilities are static. We might be working hard to get functional improvement or have degenerative conditions, or both6
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Many disabled people are poor, or even destitute.7 Before you make any “treatment” suggestions, please bear eating and heating in mind
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More disabled people live in families than are solo.8
Fundamentally, please don’t forget that—just like you—disabled people are people too. If you’re going to help fulfil an individual’s hopes or dreams, you need to ask and listen. So, what one thing are you and your service going to do differently now? Disabled friendly services are good for everyone.
Footnotes
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CM is curator for the Theatre Deli festival on social model. Theatre Deli hosted The Social Model . . . and More Festival across its Sheffield and London venues in November 2023 (https://www.theatredeli.co.uk/the-social-model-festival-2023). The festival explored new perspectives on disability and the relationship between disabled people and the world around them. The festival was led by disabled people and was based on testimonies from disabled people responding to an open call.
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Competing interests: None declared.
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Full response at: https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj.p2968/rr-4.