{"id":1278,"date":"2025-04-14T16:56:56","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T20:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/accessiblehealthcare\/?post_type=chapter&p=1278"},"modified":"2026-01-12T18:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T23:11:09","slug":"impacts-of-the-medical-model","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/accessiblehealthcare\/chapter\/impacts-of-the-medical-model\/","title":{"raw":"Impacts of the Medical Model","rendered":"Impacts of the Medical Model"},"content":{"raw":"Medicine \u2014 and the medical model \u2014 has a profound impact on disabled people\u2019s lives, extending far beyond the doctor\u2019s office or hospital. Abby Wilkerson (2002) shares the story of a young woman with an intellectual disability who felt the need to ask her doctor\u2019s approval before getting married. \u201cHer experience reflects the widespread social reliance on [pb_glossary id=\"703\"]medical discourse[\/pb_glossary] as a source of moral, not merely scientific information. The challenge to the medical profession and to related institutions is to become self-critical of discursive practices in the field that undermine the status and the self-regard of particular groups\u201d (Wilkerson, 2002, p. 35).\r\n\r\nWe navigate messages, architecture, and policies that reinforce the assumptions inherent in the medical model as part of everyday life. Medicine\u2019s influence is powerful and pervasive, operating even at the threshold of life itself \u2014 for example, in decisions about which pregnancies are considered fit to carry to term, who is deemed deserving of ventilator support, and who is eligible for medical assistance in dying.\r\n
\r\n\r\n\"Community\r\n

<\/a>From the Community<\/h3>\r\nThe next two community stories illustrate how medical authority operates through thresholds and [pb_glossary id=\"1848\"]gatekeeping[\/pb_glossary], from life-and-death decisions made at birth to the ongoing bureaucratic work required to secure everyday supports\r\n\r\nHeather<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[embed]https:\/\/youtu.be\/yTxC3M_CwZQ?si=Aipxm-aS_HRfukQS[\/embed]\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"52\"]<\/span>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[embed]https:\/\/youtu.be\/LBAZMSP5FLI?si=ekNXhpefnSf9IwJ6[\/embed]\r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"53\"]<\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

Naturalizing and Depoliticizing Disability<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\r\nIn addition to framing disability as a deficit to be addressed through medical intervention, disability scholars have shown how the medical model treats disability and health as objective facts\u2014seemingly observable, fixed, and separate from wider social relations. By contrast, Bailey and Peoples\u2019 (2017) scholarship presents health as \u201cboth a desired state of being and a social construct necessary of interrogation because race, gender, ablebodiedness, and other aspects of cultural production profoundly shape our notions of what is healthy\u201d (p. 3). In other words, ideas of health are not fixed or objective, but are influenced by power and social values.\r\n\r\nAlison Kafer (2013) shows how framing disability, health, and medicine as indisputable facts depoliticizes<\/strong> them. When something is depoliticized, it is stripped of important social and political context and complexity. Recognizing disability as socially constructed means that disability is fluid\u2014its meaning shifts over time and across different situations or spaces.\r\n\r\nYet how we experience disability is relational; it is \u201cexperienced in and through relationships; it does not occur in isolation\u201d (Kafer, 2013, p. 8). This means disability is shaped by our cultures and environments, as well as by other social relations that structure our lives, such as race, gender, and class. This approach to disability also acknowledges that there is no single disability experience. It opens space for an analysis that grapples with complexity and asks important questions about relations of power, challenging taken-for-granted assumptions about success, effort, productivity, merit, and humanity itself.\r\n
\r\n\r\n\"Community\r\n

From the Community<\/h3>\r\nListen to Sydney reflect on their experiences navigating the world with both visible and invisible disabilities. Their story invites us to consider how medical, social, and cultural understandings shape what gets recognized as a disability and what doesn\u2019t.\r\n\r\n[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=s1FkoJikLgo[\/embed]\r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"54\"]<\/span>\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Activity<\/h3>\r\nBuilding on Sydney\u2019s story, reflect on the idea of naturalizing disability and complete the following activity.\r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"89\"]<\/code>\r\n\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"

Medicine \u2014 and the medical model \u2014 has a profound impact on disabled people\u2019s lives, extending far beyond the doctor\u2019s office or hospital. Abby Wilkerson (2002) shares the story of a young woman with an intellectual disability who felt the need to ask her doctor\u2019s approval before getting married. \u201cHer experience reflects the widespread social reliance on