How do you define independence? What doe it give to your life? (250 words)
Living Independently
Chapter 3 from
Psychology of Disability
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Defining Survival
The dictionary defines “survive” as meaning “to remain alive or in existence, as after an event or the death of another.”
There’s a distinction between “merely existing” as opposed to “really living.”
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Defining Independence
Independence” dictionary definition is “freedom from the influence, control, or determination of another or others.
Ability to survive alone, without the aid of others or respect to their actions
Context makes clear the definition
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There’s no such thing; we are all interdependent”
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COMPONENTS TO LIVING INDEPENDENTLY
Maximizing one’s health and capabilities,
Mastering the physical world,
Interacting with other people,
Striving for normalization, and
Taking charge of one’s life
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Maximizing Health and Capabilities
CDC (2010) found that individuals with disability had serious secondary health conditions that drastically reduced quality of life and health
Mental health and patient education was suboptimal
Further, they found that compared with people who do not have disabilities, those with disabilities have higher rates of chronic conditions, less health coverage, and lower rates of exercise and other recommended behaviors such as smoking cessation.
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Little to no attention was given in rehabilitation to the impor- tance of exercise, nutrition, behavior (health-affecting habits), and state of consciousness. Exercises focused more on strengthening weak muscles than on tuning general physiological functioning; diet was seldom stressed unless it was clearly responsible for disease symptoms, as in diabetes.
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Why does health matter?
The less external help needed to accomplish day-to-day tasks, the more spontaneously and economically life can be lived.
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Mastering the Physical World
Individuals with physical or visual impairments face enormous obstacles in the built environment
Safety and accessibility
To master the physical world individuals minimize their own impairments by (1) developing every feasible adaptive skill, and (2) keeping up the good fight to get remaining environmental barriers removed.
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Accessibility and Safety
Americans With Disabilities Act 1990 shifted the burden from the individual to the organization
Evacuation systems for skyscraper, auditory street signs a
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Universal Design
Designing buildings that are accessible to everyone is no longer an arcane science, yet there are still many examples of new construction that overlook basic requirements.
Private homes are not covered under the ADA
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A very real scenario
A lypical example of what happens follows. Let’s say you’ve grown accustomed to going, spontaneously, to restaurants without making prior calls to confirm accessibility. When you and your date discover five steps down after entering the restaurant, you are embarrassed and angry. The restaurant was built after statutes requiring accessibility were in effect, and the target of your anger is out of compliance with the law.
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Assisted Devices and Accessibility
Mac, Reiko and Carol
Some individuals reject assisted devices
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Communication
Braille, audio tape, and optical or electronic devices have greatly reduced the need for personal services (readers, primarily) for visually impaired people.
Closed captioning capacity is now built into virtually all new television sets, and new developments such as amplification loops for those with some hearing capacity and real time interpreting (where someone similar to a court reporter takes notes that appear on a screen) have been helpful to many people.
Interpreters
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Asking for Help
Barriers: eye contact and perception that mobiltiy aids are clutter
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Managing Expectations
and Assertiveness
Lowered expectations need to be fought if they are not to impose a ceiling on the individual’s accomplishments.
Asserting Oneself in obtaining information,
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Personal Service Providers
Many people with severe disabilities find themselves in a situation ordinarily reserved for the relatively well-to-do
Problems arise: during the selection and supervision of employees
Mistreatment, unreliability, exploitation, defection without notice, subtle cruelties of withholding help, and countless other abuses are reported regularly
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Differing levels of service
Readers and drivers for blind and interpreters for deaf individuals are extremely important aids to independent living, but assistants for severely disabled people may be essential to their biological survival. The potential of such a dependency to affect both persons’ lives is not always fully appreciated.
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