Special Issue Editor: Paul B. Perrin
Rehabilitation psychologists have long argued for the incorporation of a holistic, psychosocial perspective encompassing all aspects of disability, with a particular focus on the connection between disabled people and the social environment. They have worked alongside many other disability activists and contributed to the passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, and most recently the ADA Amendments Act of 2008.
Diversity and social justice are so foundational and central to rehabilitation psychology that these values are quite literally the heart and soul of the field.
A special issue of Rehabilitation Psychology features a series of 13 articles on diversity and social justice in disability research that coalesce around three general themes:
- critical disability identity theory
- discrimination and prejudice
- health disparities in the context of disability
The manuscripts in the special issue conceptualize disability as an important aspect of identity, as well as examine disability as it intersects with other diverse forms of identity (race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and socioeconomic status, among others).
Some of the manuscripts incorporate new insights into how disparities in rehabilitation and psychological adjustment to disability occur in diverse populations, how stigma may play a role in that adjustment, and/or how individual, cultural, or collective strengths of diverse populations facilitate maximal rehabilitation and psychological adjustment in the context of disability.
Many of the manuscripts have implications for how psychologists and allied health professionals can best fulfill their social justice, human rights, and advocacy missions in order to advance access and inclusion for disabled people.
There are a number of key takeaways from the articles in the special issue.
The first is that disability is an important aspect of identity for many disabled people. Some of the articles address the difference between using person-first language (e.g., "person with a disability") and identity-first language (e.g., "disabled person"), with the latter explicitly centering disability as an important and positive aspect of identity similar in many ways to other important and positive aspects of identity such as race/ethnicity (e.g., "Asian person"), sexual orientation (e.g., "lesbian woman"), or age (e.g., "older adult"). The use of euphemisms (e.g., "differently abled," "special," or "physically challenged") has the effect of not only patronizing and stigmatizing disability, but actually erasing it both in terms of the full potential of disabled people to claim it as an aspect of identity and of ignoring the reality of ableism in the daily lives of disabled people.
A second key takeaway is that it is important that psychologists develop disability cultural competence skills in order to work competently with disabled people, particularly when the clinical focus is on disability identity. This competence involves understanding one's own biases, being able to help clients identify and challenge their own negative automatic thoughts and core beliefs related to disability, understanding when conversations with clients about disability are helpful or unhelpful, and acting as an ally for the disability community, with considerations depending on whether the psychologist is disabled or not.
A third key takeaway is that just as it is critical for White psychologists who choose to focus on racial/ethnic minority populations to examine their own assumptions, biases, and limitations, so too must nondisabled psychologists consider and have honest conversations with disabled people and disabled psychologists, as well as with each other, about the inherent biases and conditioning that they experience based on being nondisabled.
However, it is important not to equate race/ethnicity with disability or racism with ableism, as doing so risks marginalizing the intersectionality of disabled people of color and the multiple oppressions experienced. When racism and ableism operate simultaneously in the lives of disabled people of color, or also interact with other forms of oppression, very unique perspectives and experiences emerge, echoing the pithy maxim that the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.
The centering of diverse voices reflecting intersecting identities in psychology is one of the most important future directions in psychology.
Special Issue
- View the table of contents and abstracts on APA PsycNET
- Purchase the special issue
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Note: This article is in the Health Psychology & Medicine topic area. View more articles in the Health Psychology & Medicine topic area.