Do you think the physically disabled have more support?

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Not everyone who claims insanity after committing a violent crime is faking, and insanity as a defense isn't much of one: People who successfully claim insanity don't get a sentence, but get committed until their doctors decide they're healthy enough to leave. On average, people committed for violent crime as determined to be caused by their insanity spend twice as long in institutions as people convicted of a violent crime spend in prison.

The one person I know in real life who successfully claimed insanity really was having a psychotic episode when he committed the crimes he was arrested for, and it looks like he'll be institutionalized for some time.

As for the question: I don't think that people with physical disabilities are necessarily treated better. I would say more, but I'll just point back to Callista's blog post on the subject.

Are people's brains wired to be repulsed by visibly disabled or invisibly disabled but weird people so the abled normal people who fit into the group can dehumanize and throw the undesirable subhumans out of the group in the cavepeople days so the disabled weird people will not be useless drains upon the tribe in which only abled normal people deserve to live because they can contribute calories from hunting and gathering when day-to-day survival is really hard?

I seem to recall reading somewhere that historical and anthropological evidence is that humans tend to take care of disabled family and community members more often than not.

So true! But they do have accessibility problems in some places.

I think some people are misunderstanding the question. Whilst I agree that people with physical disabilities may get more empathy and understanding, I actually think that those with mental disabilities get just as much support. A lot of people with physical disabilities are very independent and only require the literal support of a brace, wheelchair, cane etc. The mentally disabled may rely on the care of several people.

Yup....treatment for some physical disabilities is pretty simple, whereas I can't think of any mental disorder that has a cheap, easy treatment.

But I didn't vote, because I don't feel I know enough about disability or treatment.

If you look at Table 1 in the Executive Summary from this:
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publication ... price.html
You will see some estimates of the cost of mental healthcare in England. Seems to be about £22.5 billion PA in 2007. All I need now is the total healthcare bill for England in 2007, which I can't find.....but do the figures represent the total cost, or just the official state-sponsored spend? What about the private sector and the things ordinary people do for each other and for themselves, that never gets counted?

Professionally, I'd guess they're about equally supported.

Random individuals however are far more understanding of physical disabilities because they're not invisible, so are more likely to do the little things to support the person (holding the door for someone in a wheel chair vs. turning down their blasting music for the person with an ASD or SPD. It's not that they're trying to be less supportive, its that the disability is invisible so they don't know that they need to be supportive.

Thus, I voted physical disabilities get more support. I do think its important to specify that at the professional level I don't think they have more support however.

I'd say the physically disabled definitely have more support. I can't even imagine someone telling a person in a wheelchair or a blind person that they are faking or just need to try harder to walk or see. If a person has mental problems they are more likely to be accused of faking or be told to just control it or just act normal or told that they don't look like anything is wrong with them.

those on axis 1 diagnosis including depression, anxiety and aspergers/autism are believed to be not permanent and can actuallly be improved with therapy. there is a belief among psychologists (or at least my psychology lecturers) that accommodation will result in the slowing down of improvement due the reinforcing nature of accommodating.

people who are have an intellectual disability and those who serve low-functioning autism i believe get as much support if not more than a person with a physical disability

I have schizophrenia and AS. I have had a hard time getting disability allowances in some cases (especially at university) because they assume mental illness/AS is "easier" to deal with, or can be less prominent. I am really being messed about by the disability services at university. I was sectioned three times during my first year at university because the stress caused me to have three dramatic relapses. All because some people don't think mental illness is "as bad" as physical illness.

I have had people in public accuse me of stealing "some old lady's freedom pass" (I have a freedom pass which gives me free travel all over London because I am disabled as mentioned above). They say this just because I can walk fast and I am not using a walking stick, not blind etc. They assume that because I look healthy from the outside, that I am not disabled.

The physically disabled do get more support but in Britain there is a very nasty rhetoric of hatred against the poor and disabled which leads to people in wheelchairs being physically attacked when they go out quite often.

Well that is a problem as more recent scientific evidence shows that clinical depression is actually more of a long term disorder with genetic components than psychologists used to think. However, there are a lot of people who get very mild cases and then think they know what living with a much more severe or drug resistant case of depression is like. Everyone knows what it's like to "feel depressed" every once in a while. They don't know what it feels like when you must cope with feeling that way 90% of the time for months or years on end.

Yes I think the physically disabled are more understood. When I see a person in a wheelchair, (maybe also with a mental disability too), they get less stares from people, but somebody like me who is as able-bodied as anyone else and is high-functioning and ''normal'', we still get stares for some reason.

Not only that, when I say how disabling my anxiety disorder is, people just say, ''oh don't let stuff worry you'', or if I say how unconfident I am, people just say, ''just ignore everyone and don't worry about what they think'', or if I say how much of a struggle it is for me to say no to people, they just say, ''just stand up for yourself and don't worry about what they feel.''

People telling me to be this confident, outgoing, happy, tough person that I'm not and will never be (and if I did I will just make more of a fool of myself) is just like telling a legless person to grow a leg. But people don't see it like that. They just think that just because it's a mental disorder, you have control over it, but sometimes it's hard to change who you are when your brain is wired that way.

Simple phobia (for example fear of snakes).

In the vast majority of cases, a couple weeks of CBT can completely cure a simple phobia.

Anyway a lot of physical disabilities aren't as simple to treat as people think. For example, imagine a person who is paraplegic due to a spinal cord injury. Most people think 'just give him a wheelchair and make everything accessible and he'll be fine'. Well, wheelchairs are expensive, and there are many different models for different kinds of needs. And they break down, especially if you have to use them day in and day out. Plus paraplegia can impair bladder control, and cause circulation problems, and sitting still all day can cause sores on your skin from pressure, and all those can be readily dealt with but you really need to know what to do about them.

And that's even with one of the simpler disabilities. Most physically disabled people don't have spinal cord injuries. There's a myriad of different physical disabilities with different severities and complexities and issues to them.

I think it's easier for non-disabled people to imagine having a physical disability, however, because your body is less central to your reality than your mind is.

No, physical disabilities aren't always cheap or easy to fix. I also realize that people's ability to cope with a physical disability is largely a function of their mental health which may not be under their control either. Some people can cope very well with all the trials and difficulties presented by a physical disability. Some can't and wind up horribly depressed for the rest of their lives. A lot of injured veterans have horrible mental issues along with their physical injuries, yet only the physical injury is treated seriously. I also think physical injuries don't lead to the same disrespect that mental issues lead to, even if adequate treatment/accommodations are lacking for both cases.

I think people with obvious disabilities are treated better than the ones who look normal. It's frowned upon and social taboo to make fun of someone in a wheelchair or make fun of a blind person or someone with Down's syndrome and other obvious conditions. You look really bad when you make fun of someone with it even if it's not because of their disability but because of something else. People will just assume you are making fun of them for their condition. But with invisible disabilities, people get away with it because they think you can be like them if you try hard enough and you look normal so no one is going to know they are making fun of someone with a disability.

Heck even the kids in my elementary school with obvious disabilities got help they needed and didn't get made fun of and I did because I looked like everyone else. Plus the school didn't care about my issues and continued treating me like everyone else in a bad way. My parents had to keep fighting with them every year to get them to follow my IEP. For a while I thought they didn't understand and couldn't get it and my mom said they were all stupid and lazy. Then I found my old IEP records and medical records written by them and they knew all along about my problems and they just didn't care. I felt disgusted by it. They were the ones that labeled me with all these conditions and they said I had behavior problems. Mom said I didn't but they said I did. I wonder if my mom is just being politically correct about me because she will not call it behavior problems. You know how parents view their kids different than other kids.

So kids that made fun of me in school were not shunned for it because I was seen a mean or weird or rude. But yet some of them would contradict themselves by saying I am ret*d and then call me stupid and make fun of me. So obviously they knew I was different but yet still made fun of me for it simply because I looked normal and could cover themselves with all these excuses like I am just stupid or I am just mean or weird or rude and not even say I'm ret*d. So obviously they liked making fun of people with disabilities.