{"id":242,"date":"2025-01-12T23:58:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T04:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/accessiblehealthcare\/?post_type=chapter&p=242"},"modified":"2025-12-16T16:28:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T21:28:30","slug":"the-medical-model","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/accessiblehealthcare\/chapter\/the-medical-model\/","title":{"raw":"The Medical Model","rendered":"The Medical Model"},"content":{"raw":"

Medicine and Healthcare<\/span><\/h2>\r\nMedicine and healthcare shape almost every aspect of our lives in the Global North, even when access to formal medical and health care is precarious. For many Ontarians, access to consistent and acceptable health care is insecure.\r\n\r\nGiven the significance of medicine in shaping our everyday experiences, including our experiences of our bodies and health, it isn\u2019t surprising that disability experience has also been viewed through the lens of medicine.\r\n\r\nWhile later modules in this resource will outline some of the many frameworks or models for understanding disability, the model with the firmest grip on our understanding is the medical model. Essentially, the medical model looks at disability\/madness\/sickness etc., and says: there is a problem with your body\/mind, so we need to fix or change something about your body\/mind to fix the problem.\r\n

When Medicine Defines Disability<\/span><\/h2>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1787\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1024\"]\"A Brampton Civic Hospital at night. Source: Allen McGregor. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nLooking at our bodies, lives, and social organization through the medical lens \u201ccame to be accepted as the authoritative account of disability\u201d (Stone, 1987). This means that how we think about disability, how we respond to disabled persons, and how we approach the problems disabled people face\u2014our attitudes, our social policy, our discourse, and even our most well-intentioned behaviours\u2014have at their heart certain ideas about the condition of disability that are so pervasive as to be almost invisible. They are informed by a dominant narrative rooted in the medical model of disability.\r\n

The Logic of Cure<\/span><\/h2>\r\nMost importantly, these approaches are grounded in an underlying assumption of able-bodied supremacy: the belief that life is better without disability. This normalizes the idea that disability should be erased or corrected, and that individuals are responsible for striving toward socially defined standards of \u201cnormal.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhen this explanation of disability dominates, it becomes difficult to imagine other ways of understanding disability, including those grounded in disabled people\u2019s own knowledge and experience (Withers, 2012; Pfeiffer, 2002). Under the medical model, medical professionals are positioned as the primary [pb_glossary id=\"1849\"]authorities[\/pb_glossary] on disability and its treatment, while [pb_glossary id=\"1842\"]lived experience[\/pb_glossary] is often treated as secondary or insufficient.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1800\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"739\"]\"A Early 20th-century weight-loss advertisement promoting \u201csanitized tapeworms\u201d as a cure for fatness, which is framed as a life-threatening condition. Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration (Public domain).[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe medical model is a \u201cfind it and fix it approach to disability\u201d (Elliott & Dreer, 2014, p. 80). It assumes an ideal body and mind that meets standards of functioning, regulation, capacity, acuity, comportment, reason, and so forth. The [pb_glossary id=\"874\"]body-minds[\/pb_glossary] that deviate from these standards are understood by the medical model as abnormal, \"disabled,\" and need to be addressed by medical intervention.\r\n\r\nA significant concern with the medical model is that it operates from what Kafer (2013) refers to as a curative imaginary<\/em>: \u201can understanding of disability that not only expects and assumes intervention but also cannot imagine or comprehend anything other than intervention\u201d (p. 27). Under this logic, everything that falls outside of what is considered normal or [pb_glossary id=\"696\"]normative[\/pb_glossary] is viewed as pathological or tragic problems that require intervention by medical experts. Chadha and Rogers (2023) note that \u201cthe touchstone of the medical model is that by deploying medical intervention, physiological or psychological irregularities can be corrected and cured or, in the worst case, contained and controlled through [pb_glossary id=\"698\"]institutionalization[\/pb_glossary]\u201d (p. 237). Because disability is framed as a problem that exists within individual bodies and\/or minds rather than as a [pb_glossary id=\"876\"]socially constructed[\/pb_glossary] category, responsibility for 'solving' disability is likewise placed on individuals.","rendered":"

Medicine and Healthcare<\/span><\/h2>\n

Medicine and healthcare shape almost every aspect of our lives in the Global North, even when access to formal medical and health care is precarious. For many Ontarians, access to consistent and acceptable health care is insecure.<\/p>\n

Given the significance of medicine in shaping our everyday experiences, including our experiences of our bodies and health, it isn\u2019t surprising that disability experience has also been viewed through the lens of medicine.<\/p>\n

While later modules in this resource will outline some of the many frameworks or models for understanding disability, the model with the firmest grip on our understanding is the medical model. Essentially, the medical model looks at disability\/madness\/sickness etc., and says: there is a problem with your body\/mind, so we need to fix or change something about your body\/mind to fix the problem.<\/p>\n

When Medicine Defines Disability<\/span><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A
Brampton Civic Hospital at night. Source: Allen McGregor. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Looking at our bodies, lives, and social organization through the medical lens \u201ccame to be accepted as the authoritative account of disability\u201d (Stone, 1987). This means that how we think about disability, how we respond to disabled persons, and how we approach the problems disabled people face\u2014our attitudes, our social policy, our discourse, and even our most well-intentioned behaviours\u2014have at their heart certain ideas about the condition of disability that are so pervasive as to be almost invisible. They are informed by a dominant narrative rooted in the medical model of disability.<\/p>\n

The Logic of Cure<\/span><\/h2>\n

Most importantly, these approaches are grounded in an underlying assumption of able-bodied supremacy: the belief that life is better without disability. This normalizes the idea that disability should be erased or corrected, and that individuals are responsible for striving toward socially defined standards of \u201cnormal.\u201d<\/p>\n

When this explanation of disability dominates, it becomes difficult to imagine other ways of understanding disability, including those grounded in disabled people\u2019s own knowledge and experience (Withers, 2012; Pfeiffer, 2002). Under the medical model, medical professionals are positioned as the primary