What you will learn:

  Click below to find the answers

The medical model of disability focuses on providing support to people living in a situation of disability by addressing the physiological differences that create pain, struggle or barriers to their health and psychosocial development.

Generally, research and practice under the medical model focus on the biological ​differences shared by groups of people. The medical model highlights how differences create deficit, pathology or delay in achieving developmental milestones. The underlying goal of the medical model is rehabilitation or curing the individuals and assisting them to achieve developmental milestones along a trajectory that is as close to statistically “normal” as possible.

Under the medical model, the goal is to first identify the disability as a distinctive feature of a person’s body or mind, caused by disease, trauma or other health conditions. ​The next step is to identify the required medical care provided in the form of individual or group treatments administered by professionals. ​From this perspective, disability is a problem that needs correction.

According to medical model advocates, groups of individuals with specific conditions require specific supports, treatments or programs to achieve optimal development. To deprive them of this by disregarding difference is detrimental to development.

The social model of disability focuses on providing support to people living in a situation of disability by addressing the obstacles or barriers to social and professional inclusion that people with disabilities face every day. The social model of disability emerged after many years, when people with disabilities and their families began a movement of advocacy, fighting against the abuses suffered by people with conditions of difference under the medical model. 

The social model focuses on the diversity that people with disabilities add to our families and communities. Within this model, people with conditions of difference are seen for their strengths, and their potential to enrich society. Because of this, treatment goals aimed at “normalizing” people with disabilities are detrimental, as they stifle the richness of diversity that could be possible in our families, communities and society.

Social model advocates explain that, by focusing exclusively on difference, be it biological, developmental, or physical, the medical model tends to dis-empower, isolate and stigmatize groups of people with biological differences, leaving them vulnerable to discrimination, abuse and loss of rights. They assert that the benefits of the medical model do not outweigh the costs of such an approach. ​

Social model advocates believe that the best thing for support professionals to focus on in offering support to people with disabilities is what can be changed in the environment. Many believe the benefits of reshaping homes, workplaces and recreational venues to make space for a diversity of people will ultimately outweigh the benefits of treating deficit or impairment.

Without access to medical model types of information, such as types of disability, diagnosis, impairment effects, people with disabilities are at risk of not having access to supports and treatments that they want or need, such as rehabilitation therapies. Without access to social model types of information, people with disabilities may internalize negative messages and stigma. They may believe that they are not worthy, able or competent to be able to achieve their goals and they have to achieve or fail alone. ​ Also, without social model types of information, stakeholders across many areas of society will not have the necessary information to know how to work toward becoming more inclusive.

Different researchers and agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), began to see the necessity for a new type of model, which allows for the perception of medical aspects, impairment effects and social environments to better understand disabilities. These models are often referred to as integrated models of disability.

 Integrated models of disability highlight the importance of the physiological effects of disability, as well as the barriers embedded in the various environments that people with disability live and work. These models go a step further and examine the possible interaction between these effects and experiences.

 The purpose of integrated models is to help provide a broad range of perceptions that can affect the outcomes of any individual. ​These models strive to answer the question, what is affecting the person? What is acting as a barrier and what is acting as a facilitator to development? ​ These models focus on what factors lead to health and wellness and, conversely what factors are interfering with it. ​ 

Learn more

Understandings from the medicine wheel are used in many traditional healing practices. The medicine wheel provides a strong foundation from which to understand disability and the wellness of people living with disabilities. It allows for understanding elements of disability present in integrated models of disability in addition to other aspects of wellness.
The medicine wheel understanding includes:

• emphasis on promoting self-determination of each individual to increase volition for self-growth;
• the pursuit of balance in body, mind, emotion and spirit;
• acknowledging the importance and interconnectedness of family, community, environments.

This framework provides additional dimension to the integrated model of disability to form an even more holistic and comprehensive understanding of disability and wellness.

As in other integrated models, the medicine wheel allows for focus on both environments and individual experiences. It also encourages people to consider the importance of each area of development for balance and wellness.

The four quadrants of the medicine wheel represent the four aspects necessary for wellness: balance in mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of life. They are all equally important. The circle represents the importance of the natural connection with each other, the land, and the Creator.  ​

While not specifically developed for disability, this knowledge is meant for all people and therefore, also people with disabilities. For example, when clients have physical disabilities, the medical model may focus entirely on their physical challenges, while the social model may focus on the barriers in their environment. Contrary to this, the medicine wheel teachings focus on the importance of balance and interconnectedness across all of the elements, offering a path to wholeness. So, for the example above, the medicine wheel teachings would encourage a person with a disability to examine and contemplate how to exert volition to strive to live life in balance.