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CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CURATIVE DISCOURSE
1. FOUNDATIONS OF CURATIVE DISCOURSE
Curative communication perspectives are the philosophies, values, and strategies that define and
support the healing process of the verbal exchange. In its simplest form, curative discourse is
aware of communication as an intervention technique that has benefits on health. This orientation
seems to have its origin from different beliefs across the world including the indigenous practices
in treating diseases, early Greek medicine among others were strengthening of the relationship
between the healer and the patient has always been a plus in ensuring the patient gets well.
However, in the post-industrial or post-modern, specifically, the Western societies, cure has been
predominantly subsumed to technical scientific medical, and communication has been
considered secondary or even inconsequential to the therapeutic process. Challenging this logic
entails critically assessing the political economy and the social processes that inform the healing
encounters of the present day. Assumptions reflect how issues such as race, gender, or class
shape the ability to obtain, presuppositions and interactions and communication in health
providers. It provides priorities that reveal the hidden prejudices and thus contribute to the
development of ethic and diverse approaches to curative discourses. More so, a critical lens
reveals how people of color, disabled, and queer folks have been harmed or even killed by
curative discourse interaction throughout history which led to the demands of culture-sensitive
practice among clinicians in the present. This also raises broader questions about establishing
authorities – who is considered to have the appropriate expertise to speak about health and
wellbeing? The epistemological position of critical discourse analysis embraces traditional
healers and CHWs through epistemological pluralism that acknowledges multiple, valid forms of
knowing and acceptable wellbeing. Finally, the premises for curative discourse from this
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analytical angle advance communication compass dialogue centered and patient-oriented
treatment that enables patients and communities to make health related decisions that are
congruent with their needs and values. The goals include both the medical and the psycho-social
– from relieving signs and symptoms and curing illness to treating pain, mourning, and
comforting, as well as fostering attachment bonds that provide purpose and meaning for living.
Hence, it is crucial to deconstruct cure to understand how the concept has hindered the
development of fair, healthy and efficient approaches to healing.
a. Historical development of the medical model of disability
The medical model of disability also has exceptionally historical origins in so far as it is rooted
in Enlightenment thinking that gave rise to a more scientized classification systems and
biological reductionism. It is evident from the early disease classifications and pathological
conditions that categorized the human body as pathological and abnormal were constructed while
at the same time opening up avenues for clinical sub-specializations and new loci of power.
Laying down of hospitals, asylums and other medical specialties brought effective discourses and
practices related to detection, classification and cure of deviations defined as disabilities. As the
growth of the social Darwinist ideas regarding biological fitness in the nineteenth century,
increasing concern over public health and degeneration of the society also paved the way for
interventions for the purpose of rehabilitating, isolating, or eradicating disability. It shifted with
the germ theory development and the rise of bacteriology, disability causality theories were
rooted in anatomical, physiological, and etiological frameworks that aimed to find a single
identifiable lesion. The medical gaze continued to play an even more overbearing role in
defining disability and influencing policies related to immigration policy, imprisonment,
sterilization, and many more. Thus, by mid-twentieth century disability has become a medical
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construct and patients have become mostly objects of pathologization that need to be disciplined
or cured. Such changes as new methods of surgery, antibiotic medications and rigorous clinical
trials placed medical authority over disability in a new light. Rehabilitative sciences,
psychometric testing, technological aids, and special education were among the important
components of the medical-industrial assemblages charged with the management, ordering, and
regulation of marked populations. Particularly in significant ways classed through the medical
model as aspiring toward remediation, the discursive construction of disability discriminated
over diagnostic territories, insurance metrics and built landscapes in ways still felt today. Such
ongoing struggles around medicalization are part and parcel of the continuing formation of the
political and epistemological contexts where disabled peoples fight for control over their own
lives.
b. Cultural representations of cure and "overcoming" disability
Popular culture often presents the disabled as people who should be fixed or heal themselves as
the culture of cure dictates from curative discourse that present disability as a disease that needs
fixing. In popular media, there are many movies and television shows that focus on characters
with disabilities who face a struggle and then reach the end point where they are cured of their
disability. Story arcs of this type promote a disabled life model and a culture of cure that implies
that the lives of individuals with disability is a life of suffering and unfortunate events and put
pressure on people with disability to live a life in constant pursuit of the utopian ‘cure,’ to be
normal. Apart from the stories in fiction, news and human interest stories also often follow the
so-called inspirational paradigm of people with disability who ‘overcome’ disability through
personal determination or medical progress. Pain and triumph stories of people who was told to
learn how to walk or hear or see again after have a positive attention as an example of
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overcoming. However, such focus presupposes that the experience of disability is only a hopeless
one and reduces disabled lives to the pursuit of the cure or, in any other way, altering the
situation. It neglects the opinions of many disabled persons who do not perceive their disabilities
as something that requires ‘fixing’ and ‘eradication’ and instead want disability to be recognized
as a normal human difference that needs to be embraced by society. Lastly, it is often portrayed
in cultural contexts where the desire and possibility of getting a cure for disability is portrayed
from the medical model of disability, that is, a model that is authoritarian and that validates only
the normative. This function works to silence and disempower disabled voices contesting such
assumptions by asserting that the pursuit of meaningful and rich lives with disability is indeed
possible without the need for cure or to be made ‘non-disabled’. Therefore, skepticism toward
pervasive cultural imperatives to overcome disability is a crucial way of analyze and undermine
curative discourse.
c. Language and rhetoric surrounding disability and cure
Language and the way that disability and the quest for cures is spoken about are highly
influential in constructing the ways that society thinks and feels about the world around it.
Expressions that have to do with lack of something, deviation from the norm, or being
substandard when used in referring to disabilities are pejorative, as are those that use disease
images where disability is the disease to be eradicated or the condition that is to be treated or
made normal. This perverse structuring lays down the able-bodied orientation as the criterion by
which people with disabilities are inevitably cast as deviant and inferior. Part of that is viewing
disabilities as issues that need to be solved – that is, it constructs a narrative in which existing in
a disabled state is something that should not be endured and is, in fact, a state that needs to be
‘fixed’. Rhetoric of this sort threatens to erase and pity people with disabilities by suggesting
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their existence is almost pathetic and lamentably useless without a cure. When the lack or loss of
function, disease, or anomaly is described as something that needs to be removed or done away
with, this creates the impression that disabled people and their experiences are only negative.
This does not capture the fact that for some, disability is part of the storytelling, the culture, and
the pride that they do not want to be erased, or to have the cure for. A demand for more research
focused on specific impairments and funding campaigns that prompt the public’s longing for an
inspiring success story and a ‘win’ over terrible illnesses continue to uphold curative paradigms
and provide for disability primarily in terms of medical challenge rather than as a part of the
human variation. Prospect for health funding for curative research based on economic
advantages also carry dangers of positing the worth of supporting individuals with disabilities to
lead productive lives to only profit. More sensitivity would imply more adaptation of the
discourse and the progressive narratives that would acknowledge disability lived experiences,
adaptations, and accessibility reforms as important social priorities, even if these are not
accompanied by absolute cure or reversal of impairment.
d. Influence of curative discourse on policy and legislation
Even though curative discourse is not directly present in the policy and legislation, its influence
is evident in the more subtle approach. Discourse construction of disease, disability and
treatment influences the perception and thinking of the public domain that in turn affecting the
creation of laws. In particular, the medical model of disability which grew in the 19th century
regarded impairment as a personal pathology requiring treatment and retraining to assimilate the
reconstructed disablement standard. This curative-focused paradigm formed the basis of policy
frameworks of the time; evident in forced sterilization policies for individuals considered
genetically inferior and segregation of disabled groups in the pretext of their protection. But, the
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remnants of this curative history are still practiced today. ‘Civilizing’ discourses in legislation
stigmatize the queer, the disabled, the PoC as sickly bodies threatening societal stability and thus
requiring immobilization and treatments towards rehabilitation. For instance, rhetoric on AIDS
led to quarantine of the victims, the appalling calls for locking up people. Similarly, discursive
practices that constructed LGBTQ+ as perverts and sexual deviants underpinned policies that
sought to exclude gay teachers as moral contagions. Underlying such conversation is the
assumption that citizenship is predicated on approximating normative bodies, which are also
heteronormative. This curative influence is also evident in the sustained practice of isolation and
institutionalization of disabled and neurodiverse people as they are socially regarded as better off
in some kind of institutionalized setting because they are disruptive. However, when the
Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, a new shift was made more especially in
expressing disability in civil rights terms rather than medical. This legislation contributed to the
advance of the social model framework that defined disability as an unintended outcome of
societal barriers rather than the matter of people’s unsuitability. Its curative assumptions are quite
different from the previous disability laws that stem from a model that presupposes that the
individual is sick and needs to be healed. Language and legislation – two tenets of justice –
demonstrate that curative discourse is a historically and culturally contingent matter for anxious
debate over neurasthenic piquancy. It means that they leave significant impact on policy to
decide the tolerance level of particular groups/systemically marginalized groups in terms of
acceptance, access, equity and even belongingness.
e. Intersection with other forms of oppression and discrimination
Curative discourse is antithetical to a larger sociocultural reality that is informed by power
relations that that dictates experiences of oppression and other forms of marginalization.
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Particularly, those who are in a double bind or triad or more, based on gender, race, class, sexual
orientation, ability and immigrant status experience intersectional oppression referring to
systems of dominance. Thus, for curative discourse to empower clients as participants in the
search for and achievement of recovery, it must take into consideration the clients’ positions in
terms of the matrix of domination. Such approaches pose severe consequences to marginalized
groups due to the lack of intersectional lens when the discourse is carried out. When doing
curative work, the practitioners must understand how clients with the multiple forms of
oppression and marginalization face a form of dual or multiple oppression from systems such as
racism and sexism. Closely related to this, they have to grasp the ways in which the cultural
discourses on the subject of particular social groups impact and shape the processes of trauma
and recovery. By not taking into account how different forms of oppression and the privileges
that accompany them shape marginalized communities, practitioners run the risk of projecting
onto their clients and undermining the therapy process. Progressing a curative approach means
elevating the voices of the marginalized communities who are subjected to intersectional
oppression in order to come up with subversive healing paradigms that contrast the current
mainstream Eurocentric frameworks. This makes for more empowering communication which
validates clients’ multiple oppression and agency in fights against oppression which cause
traumatic stress. Curative language needs to take into account postcolonial and antiracist
critiques of whose knowledge counts and is acknowledged. This reduces chances of discourse
acting as a way of imposing the prevailing cultures of rationality that continue to marginalize
people – an epistemological violence that is contradictory to healing and justice.
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2. CRITIQUE OF CURATIVE IDEOLOGIES
In view of this, the notion of curative ideologies needs to be analyzed since they are based on the
existence of ultimate approaches towards the settlement of various social problems.
Nevertheless, the optimistic tone inherent in these kinds of grand theories often conceals detailed
understanding of topics that are essentially complex and multifaceted. Most curative discourses
offer ideals of achievable health, togetherness and sameness that can be seen as a rebuttal of the
complexity of existence. These broad solutions for making amends for perceived individual and
collective ills usually rest on mere assumptions and biased viewpoints. For example, any global
crusades to bring about conversion to a specific religion or political system as the all-purpose
cure for societal problems often marginalize non-conforming paradigms and enforce compliance
to a set dogma. These kinds of intense calls for enlightenment or salvation of the masses do not
allow for a healthy measure of skepticism, controversy or pluralism. Similarly, plans for positive
thinking and designing of human life with the help of various systems and ideological and
aesthetic patterns that provide the key to happiness and proper living, thinking, and consuming
create narrow frameworks and norms that exclude people with other priorities and disabilities.
These examples demonstrate how curative ideologies, though hold the promise of reparation of
suffering and injustice, reproduces omission and exclusion when imposed as a single resolution.
The social ideal of a perfected social order which they wish to attain through conformity to the
correct beliefs and practices actually may tend to justify nasty ways for noble goals. Therefore,
the analysis of cure implicates the assessment of the hidden assumptions, values, and outcomes
inscribed within the claims for the complete erasure of disease. This may involve questioning
who is defining the stated solutions, for whose benefit these solutions are being offered, and
whether negative effects for the already oppressed may ensue no matter how well-intentioned the
efforts are. Instead of embracing any ideology’s idea that it has the final solution to individual
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and social issues as a simplistic answer, critical analysis reveals that no magic pill can deal with
complicated issues. Every potentially beneficial cure has hidden within it a set of judgments and
compromises that requires reflection to assess. Attention shifts to cultivating face-to-face,
projective mass communication for ethical problem solving of pluralism, priorities, and
permissiveness free of moralistic propositions for the final resolution of complex problems.
a. Ableism and the pressure to conform to "normal" bodies
Current curative discourses reinforce the idea that there are components of body normalcy to
which all human bodies should aspire to, or could aspire to. This is a nakedly ableist assumption,
which speaks to an oversimplified vision of the human body, and sustains an unjust and
oppressive social structure. The therapeutic impulse to eliminate disability and compel
compliance with the neoliberal vision of the body is linked with the capitalist model of
productivity and the specific valuation of able-bodiedness as a sign of unproblematic efficiency.
However, such standards are arbitrary to provide priority to some of the modes of productivity
and completely overlook the disabled persons. Instead of embracing diverse manifestations of
the disabled body, curative models aim at eradicating disability from the social fabric by
perpetuating biomedical work toward ‘curing’ or eradicating it. Thus, the endeavor to produce
bodies that are “normal” across the global is also informed by a eugenic drive to perfect the
world’s population. The fact that an entire system of normalcy is built upon is to define other
embodiments as abnormal is also pivotal to the concept. Thus, to normalize these variant bodies,
one has to organize enforcement procedures that, to a certain extent, involve technologies of
violence. The translations add to the notion that difference is something to be suppressed; there is
no sense in which heterogeneity is valued. While the essential difference from the medical
model, the social model of disability regards disablement as resulting not from the bodily
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difference per se, but rather from the physical and social environment that imposes the barriers
and constraints on some bodies. While the curative approach requires bodies to change in order
to fit into environments that are constructed from a hypothetical norm, the social model
advocates for conditions that make the environments accommodate variant bodies. In the end, we
can summarize that deconstructing curative discourses is tantamount to challenging those
ideologies of the body and of normalcy that have been naturalized in the cultures of the West,
what it entails is the defense and realization of disability dignity in opposition to oppressive
cultural expectations regarding the body.
b. Ethical considerations in genetic testing and selective reproduction
The ideas of genetic testing and selective reproduction are highly questionable from the ethical
point of view, as a number of questions arise in connection with autonomy, justice and dealing
with the weak. Predictive genetic testing provides the person with the likelihood of their
likelihood to be affected by certain genetic disorders thus enabling people to make informed
reproductive decisions but at the same time there is always a risk of coercion or eugenics if
society or some states define what kind of test results would make one ‘fit’ or ‘unfit’ to
reproduce. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis enables screening of the embryos that are then
selected and only the ones with no genetic diseases are implanted through IVF and this
commodifies human life as freely saleable, customizable. There are potential issues with
inequalities since these technologies are expensive and perhaps limited to specific geographical
locations. Moral dilemmas are dualistic with pro-choice advocates believing that disabled people
should have a right to reproduce in contrast to anti-abortion groups arguing that such people
should be ‘_filtered out’ through consumer eugenics. While it is important for parents to exercise
the discretion of reproducing selectively, it is also crucial to spare future children and society at
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large from further harm. A problem with the availability of genetic testing and selection is the
emergence of what can be described as new forms of ‘backdoor eugenics’ as opposed to the
state-enforced collective approach to eugenics of the past. Critics of this approach refer to such
decisions as ‘selective’, claiming that through rejection of some embryos, these individuals’ lives
become devalued and thus prevented ‘due to their likely low quality of life in the presence of a
disability’. Some argue that this erases the importance of reproductive liberty while others assert
that life with a painful disability is something that may be reasonably considered as a detriment
to future offspring. Solving such a conflict of values may involve public reason on priorities and
values in medicine, rights and social justice.
c. The concept of "quality of life" and its subjective nature
The concept of ‘quality of life’ is inherent to curative ontologies, or the idea that there are cures
and treatments that can make a patient whole again. However, the term “quality of life” is a very
broad and ambiguous concept, which is interpreted in different way. This makes the use of a one-
size-fits-all approach unconvincing because what may be considered as a good quality of life for
one patient may not suffice for the other. What this subjectivity does pose is a challenge to
curative ideologies that depend on the normative assessment of health and the quality of life. For
instance, the biomedical model of health all aims at curing diseases through technical means. A
patient may have all the biological markers of a disease eradicated in his or her body, but may
not consider him or herself cured because of the perceived decrease in his or her quality of life. A
cure that helps recover the physical wellbeing of the patient may not cover loss of meaning,
purpose, capabilities, or social roles that the patient had. Patients may have different values and
personal goals, life conditions and available resources for the support that determine what
definition of ‘quality of life’ is appropriate for them. Cures as a paradigm is critiqued from a
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disability rights viewpoint in that individuals with disability or those with chronic illness can live
full, meaningful lives with support that addresses functional impairments but also grants them
autonomy, respect, and the ability to engage in societal activities. Therefore, quality of life is not
defined by the ‘absence of disease’ or by the ‘recovery’ to ‘normalcy’. Critical disability studies
framing of health and disability as socially and culturally constructed challenges the medical
model’s quest to eradicate impairment. Indeed, a qualitative notion of quality of life would
appreciate the relativity, multi-dimensionality and relativism inherent in health and well-being.
This means discarding the traditional methodologies of a specific cure that fits all, and instead
accepting a more liberal approach to understanding the goal which individuals have towards their
existence, in terms of empowered and connected lives. Ultimately, the subjectivity of “quality of
life” reveals cracks in curative ideologies: fellow human beings do not have the same objectives
and aspirations; hence, the concept of a good life is diverse.
d. Medicalization of natural human variation
The medicalization of normal variation involves the way in which mainstream Western medicine
and science diagnose as an illness and seek to treat or correct variations or deviations in physical,
cognitive, affective or behavioral characteristics that might be considered normal and natural
human variation. Instead of regarding the biological variation inherent in human beings as a fact,
the curative paradigms inherent in modern sciences and biomedicine categorize some state,
variation or identity as pathological or aberrant and thus justify medical attempts to regulate or
remediate people who deviate from the biomedical or cultural norm. For instance, the medical
model has been regarded as having an unnerving way of viewing any aspects of human variation
concerning gender, sexual orientation, disability, or neurocognitive functioning as pathologies
that need to be treated instead of appreciating them as mere diversities in the human species.
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From this stance, medical engagement tends to aim at normalizing the subject and his/her body
by making groups and identities that are considered anomalous to adjust to dominant modes of
embodiment or behavior while there is little or no critique of the over-arching philosophies of
normalcy. Consequently, critics claim that the application of medical interventions for managing
biological variation only amplifies the subjugation of those who fall outside of mainstream
corporeal norms and erases the influence of dominant cultural contexts that underpin the
understanding of health, wellbeing, productivity, beauty and such other constructs. Challenging
the inherent ‘healing drive’ that underpins such medicalization suggests how concepts identified
with curing or eradicating natural human variation are often tied to socio-political interests or
ideological agendas rather than pure biological necessities. In this way, through exposing and
defamiliarizing the curative paradigms of the scientific and medical discourses that are dominant
in culture and ideology, a critique provides the opportunity to dream and envision positive
transformations in relation to the ways in which varieties of human self are acknowledged and
appreciated in their fundamental, rich and diverse forms.
e. Economic factors driving cure-oriented research and interventions
Aspects of socioeconomic nature play a pivotal role in the orientation toward developing cures
for medical conditions and treatments for disabilities. Multinational drug makers and biomedical
device makers understand better than most the dollar signs in accommodating the disabled body
and mind. Much money is channeled to research with the aim of eradicating disabilities because
there is the potential for high returns on investment in the form of marketable cures, genetic
treatments, artificial limbs and other forms of compensation. Political actors also have economic
reasons for promoting curative models of care, as they expect new cures to raise the ability of
people in need of support to work and, in turn, decrease government costs on care, service, and
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disability benefits in the future. The curative paradigm intertwines with the capitalist framework
as the notion of fixity and restoration brings about an opportunity of restructuring the disabled
groups into more productive economic entities. Critics argue that”. However, legal non-
discriminatory attitudes continue to be overshadowed by prejudicial beliefs that individuals with
disability are of lesser worth since their impaired bodied are not capable of generating value in
productive able-bodied fashion. It is a field that looks forward to technological and scientific
advancements that could enable the disabled to be more complied with productivity reforms,
self-optimization and individualism. However, this is a double-edged sword as it effectively
erases those who have not been ‘cured’ and repositions the latter as useless and worthless within
capitalist cultures of disability. Disabled activists also note that such words put the emphasis on
medicalization and ‘saving’ people and thus contribute to stigmatization and exclusion of diverse
human worth. Such a necessity of economic utility from all bodies and minds is once again
subsumed to a further amassing of capital wealth rather than liberating each person. The question
therefore is whether this framework can be replaced by more pluralistic non-binary construction
of disability and wellbeing instead of the nominalist totalistic techno-neoliberalist paradigm?
3. IMPACT ON DISABLED INDIVIDUALS AND COMMUNITIES
Disabled persons and groups have been discriminated against and oppressed over the years
through the ableist paradigm through which disability is regarded as a condition that can and
should be remedied. This curative discourse comes from the medical model of the disability itself
which assumes that disability is a disability that is contained within the person as a ‘tragedy’.
There is no reference to the part played by restrictions imposed by societies, prejudicial attitudes,
and exclusion in ‘disabling’ impaired persons. The curative model has caused many more cases
of medical mistreatment of disabled people to cure them and turn them into normal beings. Thus,
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they have suffered abuses to their human rights and freedom in areas such as compulsory
sterilization and forced commitment to institutions. However, selective abortion and prenatal
testing remain throughout ensuring that fetuses with congenital disabilities are never born.
Despite its intention to remove disability, it preserves and strengthens the prejudice that it is
better to die rather than to be disabled. The curative paradigm also gives rise to over-reliance on
the search for a technological/biomedical ‘cure’ in disability at the same time as they fail to
attend to the demands for access, accommodation, income, education and anti-discrimination that
disabled subjects have made. It has also given rise to the notion that curing or eradicating
disability is the ultimate goal as opposed to increasing disabled people’s independence and
cultivating disability pride. This goes further to erasing disabled voices and our existence from
the public domain, the curative model remains a persistent force in modern societies and
continues to oppress disabled people/communities, deny self-governance, impose the normative
view of the dominant culture, erode the disability culture and identity, overlook the actual
support needs of the disabled and maintain inequities. In essence, it is grounded on an ableism
that disregards the disability diversity as well as its need for accommodation. It is crucial to
question and disrupt such logic and language in order to advance disability rights and justice. It
is for this reason that the social model of disability presents a constructive approach to the matter
in question.
a. Internalized ableism and self-perception
Disabled individuals often experience self-victimizing habits, which is a type of internalized
ableism. This includes adopting the oppressors’ attitudes and assumptions that negatively frame
disabled perceptions concerning abilities and value of the oppressors’ own disabled group. In
particular, the abounded societal model represents disabled people as deviant, deficient,
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dependent or even dysfunctional cripples. When such negative attitudes are incorporated in the
disabled persons, feelings of low self-esteem, embarrassment, rejection, and frailty result in their
subjectivities of self and identity. The actual experience of viewing oneself chiefly through the
‘depreciating gaze’ of the abled majority is a form of self-subjugation that amplifies alienation.
The disability theorists point out that the ideologies of internalized ableism are therefore even
more insidious as they are the direct outcomes of the paternalistic, curative, and oppressive
ideologies pushed by the medical institutions and governments. These traditional curative models
continue to perpetuate the discourse of individual misfortune concerning impairments,
debilitating disability as something that requires swift erasure or correction to assimilate the
body into the abled norm. It is, thus, through the asignification of disabled bodies and minds as a
priori deviant, in dire need of expert assistance or devoid of agency, that authoritative health
systems perpetuate internalized ableism. They include competence, citizenship, social
acceptability, and quality of life that perpetrate negative and oppressive disabilities' subjectivity
through limiting definitions that overemphasize physical and mental compliance. At the heart
level, there is an individual model of business ethos that discriminates, marginalizes and
discredits the insider knowledge of the disabled. The critique of curative ideologies therefore
gives us insight into how structural factors which marginalize persons with impairments as ill or
incapable are the actual disabling conditions – not the impairments. This suggests that there is a
need to have equal opportunities and access to resources and technology to break the cycle of
oppression or subjugation of the self- conceptions. To reframe the self-positions as positive for
people with disabilities, it is vital to regain the control over self-identifications, shifting beyond
the stigmatizing diagnostic labels and denying the subjugating paradigms that undermine life’s
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pluralism. It demands the disparaging of dominant ableist paradigms which limit possibilities of
actualizing self, outside the limited constructs of health, productivity and self-sufficiency.
b. Psychological effects of pursuing "cures" or "normality"
The psychological implications of this constant search for cures or mere normalcy among these
marginalized populations are far and reaching and rather negative. Not only does this burden
demand much emotional investment from disabled and neurodivergent people, but the
unvarnished assertion that their innate selves are flawed and need correcting erodes self-esteem
and fosters internalized ableism. As curative paradigms argue for the necessity of intervention or
extermination of specific human variations, they reinforce the idea that those minds and bodies
hold no inherent worth apart from their potential for ‘cure’. This framing presupposes a
normative, desirable condition that to which all should strive; it creates excessive pressure on
those seen as abnormal and denies their humanity and the right to choose. This pressure to alter
neurology, physicality or personality just adds to the oppression of many disabled people and
results in burnout, self-hatred and possibly suicidal ideation when the oppressive demands of
normality are seen as unachievable and therefore failure is inevitable. In particular, presenting
non-conforming minds and bodies as problematic and undesirable marginalizes people with such
traits by offering no opportunities for inclusion and belonging through the collective in the form
of community and solidarity, as well as erasing their real and diverse experiences and ways of
understanding identity. A focus on correction similarly limits people to scripts of deficiency
without acknowledgment and complexity, which poses a danger to the self. Finally, what is
frequently misleadingly portrayed as a humanitarian exercise is the obsessive endeavor to ‘cure’
ab/normality, which may end up erasing the human agency of the subjects of the ascription,
while providing impoverished definitions of health, ability, and citizenship that are detrimental to
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the well-being of the ab/normal individuals, who are forced to assimilate into the normative
paradigm. Redescribing the accessibility, integration, and support without the force of
eradicating non-normative are critical for both the self and society.
c. Disability identity and culture in opposition to curative discourse
The disability community has an oppositional culture of its own that has a complete rejection of
the medical model of disability which seeks to make the lives of people with disabilities ‘normal’
by fixing what is perceived to be wrong with them. The medical model is criticized by many
disabled activists and scholars because it denies the value of disabled bodies and seeks to
eradicate the impairments through treatment and cure which means that disabled people have no
right to claim for their disability and they do not have any culture of their own. Disability culture
includes disability arts, films, theatre, poetry, literature, and more within disability communities
and we share our experiences, humor, values, and pride within these communities. By
constructing this affirmative culture, the disability community counters the idea that they are
helpless people in wheelchairs or in need of medical assistance and handouts who can only live
full if only they were cured or fixed. On the contrary, if a person accepts disability as an aspect
of identity, then the disability makes a disabled person worthy of respect and dignity in their own
right within a community of those like them, and with pride in a unique identity. Criticizing
curative paradigms disability scholars stated that disabled lives are represented as tragedian,
disability is viewed as incompatible with happiness, and disabled people’s narratives are erased
along with their agency that enables them to define what is good for them. On the other hand, the
social model of disability recognizes that disability is not a medical model deficiency of a person
but a function of barriers that exist in the environment, society and perceptions. It is this
ideological change that enables disabled persons to fight for their civil rights and some social
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justice in order to get what they need and desire rather than have to wait for a scientific discovery
to come up with a cure for their ailments. Disability justice and culture promotes the need for
accessibility, social and cultural frameworks, products, environments and policies that allow
disabled individuals to truly flourish as they are. Disability identity enables disabled activists to
form alliances and group up in order to be able to foster change with regard to attitudes towards
disability and disability policies within a society. Advancements in medicine may alleviate
several of the functional restrictions of impairments but turning disability culture into the main
focus over a cure perspective enables disabled individuals to embrace themselves and decide on
how they can lead fulfilling and dignified lives regardless of a cure for the impairments. Thus, by
embracing identity and constructing community, disabled activists are in direct battle with
discursive erasures that stigmatize disability and disabled existence as something that must be
‘fixed’.
d. Experiences of those with "incurable" or progressive conditions
Many people suffering from chronic or rather progressive diseases have a lot of barriers within a
culture that is healing and cure-oriented. Such experiences often remain unnoticed within
dominant medical discourses that persist in framing the chronic illnesses solely in terms of cure
against the background of long-term treatment. The lack of comprehensive treatments and
instead relying only on treating the symptoms or merely stabilizing the conditions, makes
chronic diseases emotionally unmanageable. Placing curative ideologies at the core also affects
funding to research, by portraying incurable diseases as diseases that should not be funded as
they are not curable to the extent that other diseases are considered curable. This exacerbates the
systemic exclusion of patient populations who continue to set quality of life gains above
potential cures. It also becomes very hard for quality care to be provided. In line with the
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financial obstacles, social abomination appears to rise as well in order to eliminate the
opportunities for a humane existence in the face of untreatable diseases. In addition to material
disparities, dominant discursive formations regarding productivity and independence as the
essence of adulthood define reliance on caregiving as a lack of responsibility. Emphasizing cure-
oriented values, victims of progressive illnesses may consider failures of cure or morality in
controlling diseases as personal shortcomings. Without other paradigms that can justify the
fluctuating ability levels and mutual dependency, one’s critical attitude prevails over the
compassionate one. Thus, even when healthcare providers advocating for curative interventions
denote them as the norm, they might subconsciously contribute to the popular culture’s tendency
toward linear recovery expectations. Patients experience stress having to align personal
experiences to one-size-fit-all approaches disregarding the unique healthcare experiences. For
there to be more room for illness experiences different from the medical model’s narrative, a
positive view of embodiment throughout the life cycle is called for. In contrast, healthcare
systems must recognize the patients’ subjective prognoses and not associate respectability and
resources with medical prognoses. The integrated support networks can then be created to
support such funding priorities as affirming lives worth living even in face of medical
unpredictability. Such care reduces focus on disease and brings hope to patients who receive
incurable diagnoses so that they no longer appear to be deviations from health. Revamped
approach to community maintenance decreases the effects of stigmatization and social
exclusion. While any disease poses some difficulties, the positioning of quality care as a scenario
that can be attained by all makes space for fruitful existence even with persisting
problems. Therefore, it is possible to identify two key strategies for the further evolution of the
model, the development of interdependence and the recognition of diversity.
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e. Intersectionality: how curative discourse affects diverse disabled populations
Mainstream curative paradigms which posit a goal of eradicating disability or ‘changing’ or
‘fixing’ impaired bodies, can be seen to erase disabled people’s subjectivity and experience. It is
important to note that there is no ‘universal’ experience of being disabled: race, class, gender
identity, sexual orientation, and citizenship status all interplay with disability, providing the
individual with a range of rather different experiences of oppressive structures or of being
offered a ‘cure’. For example, a wealthy, white, disabled man will still experience some level of
oppression but this is much less than that of a disabled woman of color and an immigrant. That
single goal of ‘cure’ erases such complexities. It also means that other intersecting identities of
disabled people must also be cured, and their lives can only be dignified if they are no longer
disabled. It is also equally evident how this medical model neglects disabled populations because
it frames their physical differences as legally and culturally inferior and repulsive. Moreover, the
discourse of cure always implies the patriarchal idea that disabled lives are the ones worth saving
because people with disabilities’ lives are not worthy. Thus, such notions do not acknowledge
disability experiences but in a way that recognizes their worth. Those with what is labelled as
‘severe’, ‘incurable’ or ‘degenerative’ impairment, particularly if disabled, are at high risk of
violence, discrimination and being encouraged to use assisted suicide rather than receive greater
support in the community. He fixates on curing more than regularly discusses the furthering of
disability rights and access. In cases where disabilities do present some degree of medical
manageability, such as diabetes, the curative discourse privileging the eradication of somatic
deviation over the provision of proper support and choice may not merely be medically
counterproductive; it can also be understandably upsetting and emotionally damaging to disabled
people within those cultures. In the degenerative diseases such as dementia that at the moment
have no curing drugs, model of care which embrace human dignity offer other forms of health
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care than curing centered paradigms. The concept of disability justice gives more comprehensive
and intersectional perspectives towards the health policy and human rights in general, as opposed
to the deficiency-based models which do not tackle systemic oppressions, which drastically
affect disabled people of color and queer communities, homogeneous and singular cure- oriented
approaches fail to address the multiple and complex concerns of plural disabled subject-
positions. Emerging approaches incorporating a more comprehensive, human rights-based
conceptualization presents chances to enhance all lives without imposing the normative body-
mind.
4. ALTERNATIVE FRAMEWORKS AND PERSPECTIVES
Before critiquing curative discourse, it is necessary to look at the assumptions, values, and
beliefs entrenched in the dominant biomedical models of health, illness and disability. The
primary cultural paradigms in healthcare can be said to dictate norms and pathologize any
deviations, framing otherness as an illness to be treated. However, new paradigms counter these
ideas by emphasizing the importance of difference, connection, and the societal interpretation of
constructs such as health, wholeness or impairment. The social model perspectives for instance
challenge the placing of disability in the bodily imperfections rather considering it as a result of
social barriers and discrimination. Holding such ‘other’ paradigms, bodily and neurodiversity are
embraced rather than disciplined, managed, and narrated as needing ‘fixing’. Similar to what
Mad studies and Crip theory do, critical perspectives going against the pathologizing effect of
biomedical discourse provide subjugated knowledges that validate mad/Crip lives. Activist-based
campaigns, which are organized by individuals affected by the issue or disease, provide personal
experience and campaigning instead of a physician’s perspective or doctor’s
domination. Furthermore, cross-cultural considerations expose the imperialism of positing
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western bio-medical constructs around the world as the standards, thus igniting debate on
colonizing epistemologies in global health and development frameworks. Globally integrated
healthcare models are also dissimilar to the biomedical reductionist and mind-body dualisms and
embrace spirituality, ecology, and community models of wellness. Such models of wellbeing
may imply that maybe wellbeing does not develop as a result of expert’s interference, but due to
reducing factors that form distress in oppressive societies. Finally, it is necessary to counter
dominant epistemologies with marginalized knowledge and ask the question of whose benefit, or
‘cui bono’ such healing narratives serve. Instead of attempting to normalize deviant minds in
deviant bodies in order to fit some kind of normative standard, these discourses provide valuable
disruptions to the medicalization of normal and offer a space to embrace different ways of
occupying the world.
a. Social model of disability
The social model of disability therefore developed as a contrasting paradigm to the Medical
Model which interprets disability as a person’s impairment that requires fixing and re-modelling.
On the other hand, the social model is based on the consideration of how society and its
structures are built. The social model of disability distinguishes between the physical and mental
capabilities and the restriction or loss of the individual’s ability to perform at the level of the
body, and the disadvantage and exclusion which people with those capabilities experience in the
social, cultural, economic, and physical world. The medical model for disability on the other
hand focuses on placing the ‘problem’ of disability in the person while according to the social
model, disability is in the lack of adequate services and service provision in societies. For
instance, a wheelchair-bound person experiencing the limitation in how the physical environment
is constructed for the benefit of the physically abled in the form of inability to install wheelchair
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ramps, while the impairment is not the ‘issue’. The burden and obligation are, therefore, cast on
society and social institutions to remove socio-structural obstacles that limit life opportunities
and options for persons with impairments to engage. Another aspect of this transformative
agenda is breaking the normative discursive molds and assumptions of inclusion criteria. The
social model lies in the political saying that ‘disability rights are human rights’, it presents
disabled people fight for an autonomous life and questions of social justice when their humanity
was taken from them as the medical model of care and classification excluded them labeling
them as ‘abnormal’. This resonates with other civil rights campaigns where disability rights have
affirmed that disability discrimination is connected with the subjugation of other minorities and
therefore advocacy coalitions should be formed. However, some criticized the dichotomy of
medical or social models arguing that the debate itself is too simplistic and should embrace more
comprehensive approaches that recognize structures yet also are not blind to the role of medical
intervention when necessary and would like to focus more on the disabling barriers and how they
can be removed to allow people with mental health problems to be agents of change and get
opportunities. However, the social model signified a new relatively revolutionary ideological
change that led to the disability rights movement and a different perspective into disability that
does not look at it as a personal misfortune that has to be treated or rehabilitated back to a
normality that is assumed by the society but as involving questions of social value such as
diversity and inclusion which warrants a deeper reflection.
b. Neurodiversity paradigm
Neurodiversity is a relatively progressive approach to understanding and referring to disability
and impairment than the medical model. Like any other kind of diversity, neurodiversity is
perceived as a variation in the way the human brain functions, instead of disabilities like autism,
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ADHD, dyslexia as something that should be treated or healed. Advocates assert that these
atypical conduct entails the dissimilar hard wiring of the brain resulting in various ways of
perceiving, processing information, and interacting and this should be honored and understood.
This shift of perception demands for better acceptance of society, policies and structures that will
empower those with neurological impairments to live full and productive lives as they are
without having to conform to any set standard or norm. Most importantly, the neurodiversity
paradigm departs from cure-oriented frames that rely on the medical model of disability. The
latter locates the issue or the lack in the subject and confines, while prejudice and barriers within
the society and system remain uncontested. Medical research and clinical practice then center on
understanding the disease and searching for a biological cure or behavioral, genetic or
pharmacological treatment to alter the person and move him closer to the standard. However, the
neurodiversity movement that states that problems related to these disorders stem from
attempting to adapt the atypical cognition to the world that has been developed for and adapted
to normal cognition, clearly contradicts these basic premises. Rather than trying to fit people who
have different neurological connections into a ‘mainstream’ model, this is the requirement on the
other side where it is considered perfectly acceptable if not desirable in some contexts to provide
for these differences. This progressive framework therefore provides a highly needed and
extremely valuable counter-narrative that requires critical and engaged consideration of
dominant psychological, educational and medical epistemologies that uninterrogated espouse a
shallow neoliberal vision of health, of functionality, of human worth, that is defined by
normative neurotypicality. It has further enduring significance for social justice because it sheds
light on how stereotyped representations of neurological disorders are manufactured and wrestles
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with exclusion while promoting for the infrastructure that allows people with atypically wired
brains to flourish.
c. Disability pride and affirmation
The social model of disability has an affirmative outlook with regards to disability that admires it
as a form of diversity like the ethnic, racial, gender and sexual diversity. This approach counters
the medical model that defines disability as a personal misfortune or as a medical issue that
requires a solution. Disability pride and affirmation movements are among the counter-narratives
that aim at promoting disability and not stigmatizing it. These movements are inspired by other
social movements that are rooted in the concept of pride, self-identification and self-
determination that is, black pride, women’s liberation, and queer movements. The first
fundamental assumption is that it is not a sin or a personal shortcoming to be disabled or have a
compromised body or mind. Disability is not a characteristic located within an individual’s body
or mind, or lack thereof, but rather a construct where people with physical, cognitive, sensory,
and other impairments face societal barriers, exclusion, prejudice and environmental accessibility
gaps. Disability pride overturns the stigma associated with disability, recognizing it as a cultural
aspect of a person’s existence of which one should be proud. It transforms the paradigm from
seeking to fix the disabled person and make them fit into the society by adapting to the times
they are in, to altering the settings and perceptions to be more accommodating of disabled
people. This includes celebrating both the aesthetics of disability, as well as disability culture and
modes of moving through the world. Happiness is about liberation, not healing – embracing
disability and embracing the physical and mental difference rather than considering it a problem
to solve. The medical model of disability considers it as an individual tragedy that requires
treatment and the affirmative model on the other hand, deems it as a social justice issue. In
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conclusion, disability pride and affirmation-based movements aim to celebrate the lives of
disabled people and create an openness and acceptance for disability as a part of the human
experience. Discussions highlight transformation of culture and the diversification of the
acceptable norm, rather than the rehabilitation of the disabled.
d. Crip theory and disability studies approaches
The theoretical frameworks available to critique curative discourse are crip theory and disability
studies, which provide perspectives of those with impairment. It is in this context that Crip
perspectives break with the dominant models of medicine that translate disability into an
individual pathology which requires treatment, and see disability as a social, cultural and
political phenomenon. Disability is therefore not just a question of impaired physical or mental
functioning but it is a product of disabling contexts that create and sustain exclusion. While
employing social model, Crip theorists do not attempt to restore or mend disabled individuals,
who allegedly need to become ‘normal’ again or fit into the cultural mainstream, rather, they
promote acceptance of disability as one of the forms of existence and demand that barriers
should be removed. Disability studies is multi-disciplinary societal model approach which
locates disability in a societal perspective with regard to power relations, identity and
meaning. They explore how curative assumptions arise from and perpetuate ableist paradigms
that diminish and stigmatize disabled identities. Crip theory builds on this framework by
employing queer, feminist, and critical race theories to reveal reinforced forms of
marginalization. It resists medicalization and the medicalization of the experience of disability as
its object of study, but also affirms disabled experience. The Cripping reversal rationalizes cured
or non-disabled states – rather than disability – as aberrant and poses the query of why such
states are preferred from disabled ones. These reframing can, for example, dismantle the
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presuppositions of curative approaches and highlight the importance of adjusting contexts as well
as embracing disability pride. Both approaches enlighten how ideas of recovery, reformation,
and reintegration into society and employment are also socially constructed in a way that
discriminates against people with disabilities. Activist approaches also involve a health and
inclusive body politic desirability of disabled people’s inclusion in policy and research
transforming systemic oppressions. While dominant individualistic medical models align the
concept of cure with the good and posit it as unquestionably neutral, Crip/disability frameworks
question the need for cure and call attention to its potential effects. They bring into fore the
negative side effects of cure centric approach and discourses while advocating for disabled
subjecthood and autonomy. Any such alternative perspectives therefore urge a closer scrutiny of
the ideologies, stances, structures, and knowledge-frames that underlie the compelled quest for
cures in the assumed pursuit of the normative.
e. Universal design and accessibility as alternatives to "cure"
While attempting to either eradicate or remediate disability, both the ideas of universal design
and accessibility offer more constructive outlooks aimed at the removal of the barriers. It means
the design of physical spaces and objects that most individuals can employ without adaptation or
redesign when a specific group is considered. For instance, the introduction of ramps alongside
stairs, display of videos with captions and the provision of keyboard options instead of a mouse
as a means of viewing, listening, and getting around exemplify universal design adjustments that
make it possible for the disabled mobility, hearing, and vision impaired persons to access and
participate in various activities. This is quite the opposite from the prevailing medical model that
considers disabilities as belonging to the person and thus require treatment and eradication.
Universal design structures put the burden back on systems within society to accommodate for
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the variability in human ability. While universal design deals with designing general solutions to
accommodate the needs of as many people as possible, accessibility goes further than this by
enforcing accommodations for specific purposes such as employment, education and public
spaces. There is a different paradigm that is based on the principles of equal access and
opportunities for individuals with disabilities and it is expressed in the Americans with
Disabilities Act rather than focusing solely on clinical approach or emphasis on normalization.
Within this framework, offering an accommodation or modification is not considered as a reward
granted to students of color but rather the exercise of fundamental rights. Such words as
reasonable accommodation, IEP, and auxiliary aids reveal other constructions that are different
from the prototypical curing paradigm. Whereas, cures, put emphasis on concentrating the deficit
in the disabled individual, accessibility on the other hand is all about eradicating constraints in
the immediate community. While particular adjustments relate to the unique impairment or
disability, the principle of integration and engagement demeans a medical model’s preoccupation
with ‘fixing’ or ‘curing’ in the name of autonomy and quality of life. This is a conceptual
development compared to focusing on the transformation of disabled persons, to acknowledge
equal citizenship of persons with all types of abilities. The goals shift from eradicating
disabilities to advocating for persons with disabilities to be able to live and perform their daily
public and private lives as they please. Medical cures will never be completely out of vogue, of
course, but UD and AODA offer other paradigms that move the onus from the individual to the
wider society when it comes to accommodating the needs and protecting the rights of disabled
persons. These views do not accept the notion of normal in the conventional methods of
encouraging variation, but instead embrace it and even revel in the vast differences among
humans.
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5. REIMAGINING HEALTHCARE AND SUPPORT SYSTEMS
The COVID-19 outbreak exposed the weaknesses as well as the disparities in the stewardship of
healthcare and support structures worldwide and pushed for a reinvention and reform. Regarding
the healthcare, it is still poorly accessible, and discriminated population faces some limitations.
Unemployment, disability and food support schemes are becoming more rigid to get and do not
adequately provide for the requirements. A critical analysis questions assumptions underlying the
status quo: Particularly, what concepts regarding health, illness and disability do inform such
systems? What communities dominate and which ones are neglected? In what ways might other
conceptualizations change, entry, effectiveness and results? A reimagining displaces health care
solutions with a biomedical model that situates sickness and CDS reactions in terms of earned
entitlement to assistance and personal accountability to reposition health, illness and assistance
as a question of social justice. Health is defined not only as freedom from disease but also as
having dignity, being able to exercise control over one’s life and leading a well-balanced life.
Sickness and impairment are as much a function of social arrangements and factors as they are of
bodies or biochemistry. Assistance focuses on primary living needs that include shelter, food and
support in finding a place to belong. The broader concept of this theorization is that health care
and assistance are public, rather than personal, concerns. It foregrounds the experiences of
people of color to disrupt practices, places, and policies that are informed by erasure or White
savior complex. It casts a glance away from simply asking cost- efficiency questions in order to
transform care and support into what it should remain and become – gestures of solidarity and
empowerments. Such a radical reformulation in this sense results in healthcare as a common
where people come together for service, support infrastructures that offer unconditional
availability, and cure facilities that treat both individual and social bodies. The focus of the
discourse changes from a frugal view of people to their respect for people’s lives.
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a. Person-centered approaches to care and support
The healthcare organizations’ culture has in the past focused on technical, medical, economic
rationality, productivity, efficiency and effectiveness rather than social processes and relationship
aspects of care. However, there is an increasing awareness that the so-called supportive care is
more of a patient centered, more of a holistic rather than just a medical model where patients are
seen as acutely sick, chronic disease or ‘a money-making machine’. Person-centered care aims at
going beyond the medical model and depersonalized interactions where the professional reduces
the patient into a set of numbers and physical problems, but, instead, recognizing the patients’
life worlds, biographies, social roles, and meaning systems as they themselves construe illness
and wellness. The concept of person-centered change involves the cultural and organizational
change of cultures and structures in healthcare facilities, organizations, and in training of
professionals. At the individual provider level, doctors can be trained to enhance their
interpersonal communicative skills such as, patient/client-oriented communication, reduced
power distance, and decision-making control between the medical personnel and the
patient/client rather than adopting the medical model where the doctor is always in charge. At the
organizational level, it will be possible to deliver a well-coordinated, multi-disciplinary care to
the elderly, minimize the emergence of a fragmented approach due to its specialization, and
ensure that care givers spend more time with the elderly to foster humane relationships between
them and their patients. Similarly, the licensing and accreditation criteria are also flexible to
allow for greater focus on the use of demonstrations of other skills that are emotional, ethical,
cultural, and communication skills that are crucial in relationship-based care. Finally, and
similarly, increased participation or presence of ‘others,’ increased diversification and diversity
are also core aspects of humanizing of medical experiences, tools, and support opportunities
through the inclusion of even more patients and their insights into various decision-making
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processes. The aim is to intervene in the oppressive, reductionist paradigms, which provide
formulaic and inadequate but patriarchal and erasing solutions to the targeted population’s needs
and self-determination regarding health, healing, and well-being as perceived and defined from
the minority and oppressed subject’s perspective. In total, person-centered philosophies seek to
recapture the soul of medicine and transform caregivers’ models of practice into more open,
empowering, participatory, voluntary, and inclusive paradigms for health care that privileges the
inherent and self-evident dignity of every human being and that fosters real partnership.
b. Balancing medical intervention with disability acceptance
Even the healthcare support system for the disabled has adopted a medical model of disability
that deems disability as a disease that has to be treated, and eradicated rather than as a variation
of the human species. This curative approach is apparent in the medical practice where physical
and mental abnormalities present in disabled individuals are treated with a view of correcting
them and also in societal care systems where the primary goal is to assist disabled individuals to
assimilate to ‘normal’ society. A growing disabled rights approach challenges the notion of cure
as a solution to disability and posits for a more nuanced and equal admission of cure and
acceptance into rehabilitative systems and structures. Contrary to the medical model of disability
which sees disability as a person’s misfortune that should be eradicated or fixed, the social model
of disability describes disability as a structural issue, a result of a society that is oppressive to
neurological, cognitive, physical, and sensory variability. Symptomatic treatment alleviates
suffering but can also enforce normalization; lack of acceptance means that reintegration is out
of the question. Such support systems developed by or for the non-disabled are often nuanced
and miss the mark. Transforming healthcare and support also means fostering disabled
individuals’ agency over the treatment decisions for their bodies and redirecting the interventions
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and supportive strategies from eradicating disability toward cultivating self-authorship. More
control in medical choices, where to live, work and when to engage in community activities may
enable disabled persons to obtain medical treatment that can end their disability and at the same
time sustain their disability identity. However, there are always some challenging dilemmas to
solve, such as the relationship between medical crisis interventions during early childhood and
identity formation or the balance between parental permission and children’s agency that ought
to be best negotiated. I have not come across any such easy choices here; what exists are a
number of social creative possibilities in shaping out care and support that can accommodate
difference in health. As the society change over time people have come to realize that difference
in ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation and faith make the society a better place,
likewise society can keep on evolving and continue to embrace neurological and physical
differences as well.
c. Inclusive research practices and participatory action research
Many traditional healthcare research has been carried out to understand disease and disease
processes, to strive to identify the norm and to seek ways to treat the deviation from that norm.
Though this leads to the generalization and repression of many outcasts, and identities that are
deemed as impaired, on different aspects of their existence. On the other hand, IRMs
purposefully acknowledge marginalized perspectives and examine the normalization of
disability. This is best captured by participatory action research, where people affected by a given
issue are included as active participants in comprehending and enhancing human existence. This
re-imagines research as a way to listen to others’ stories and uphold the subjective worth of
persons over the usefulness of one-size-fits-all remedies. They have also privileged male ability
and masculinity, which is why positivist biomedical discourse has discredited disabled, mentally
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ill, aged, queer, Indigenous, poor, and racialized people. Universal norms segregate health/illness
and valorize able-bodied, neurodivergent, white, middle-class normalcy. Yet, those with
interdependent needs or with conditions that are invisible, stigmatized, or have multiple
dimensions are left out of the care system if their needs and circumstances do not align with
common archetypes. Structural violence also does not consider how cultural beliefs, trauma
interactions, sexuality, spirituality, environment, or family impacts the health of an individual.
Criticizing from the clinical cultural angle, the medical anthropologists have pointed out how
Western frameworks often juxtapose with other ways of knowing and writing out the structural
factors that perpetuate these gaps. PAR also provides a blueprint for embracing diversity and
embracing stakeholder input by adopting community-based methods. Individuals who are from
the same group with regard to the demographic attributes, social status, or experience get
together to discuss issues, create solutions, implement ideas, review outcomes and implement
changes in the system. It repositions such knowledge – one sourced from the individual
subjectivities and sociocultural perspectives – and fosters fair partnerships between academics
and vulnerable populations.
d. Disability-led organizations and self-advocacy movements
In the past, both medical and support services have been established with very little
consideration for individuals with disabilities and often with the aim of making the disabled ‘less
disabled’ or at least productive enough to serve society. Disabled people’s organizations have
been critically arguing against such curative assumptions for decades and are offering different
models of support, which promote personal and community autonomy, choice and mutual
support. In contrast to the medical model of disability as a personal flaw or a health issue to be
fixed, the disability rights frame addresses the issue of accessibility, stigma and marginalization
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as the problems to be solved. This social model moves attention to the erasure of discrimination
and to the facilitation of reasonable adjustments, to integration and education as well as work and
participation with others as any other person. Disabled people’s organizations have adopted the
slogan ‘Nothing about us without us’ challenging for more meaningful participation in policy-
making and re-imagining support that is framed and driven by disabled people’s lives. As an
example, Independent Living philosophy focuses on the support by peers and the services of
attendants that allow persons with extensive disability to live independently and choose their
own lifestyles within the society. These movements of self-advocacy acknowledge the fact that
disabled people have insider knowledge derived from experiencing the world’s lack of
accessibility on a daily basis. By centering solutions proposed by disability groups as well, it
does not allow for paternalistic presuppositions concerning the accurate knowledge of outside
experts. Whether it is activism of individuals and organizations at the grassroots level or their
participation in Disabled Persons International, one of the most powerful slogans of disability
rights movement is ‘nothing about us without us’ which means that it is not about people using a
system or a process that is oppressive and then trying to adapt to it or change it but it is about
bringing sociopolitical change by the people, for the people having the disabilities to transform it
into a more In this context, it is crucial to consider the fundamental transformations of curative
paradigms that have traditionally erased disability and proposing disability-led activism and
solidarity-based models that acknowledge a variety of ways of being in and experiencing the
world.
e. Future directions: moving beyond the cure/care dichotomy
The field of health has had a tradition of narrowing disease treatment and care to a biomedical
model, which pathologizes suffering as a purely physiological occurrence and overemphasizes
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reliance on technology to solve social problems. New models that will embrace health in its
broader meaning are promising in terms of encompassing this unproductive cure/care division.
Patient-oriented, psychosocial paradigms recognize the fact that people’s goals differ; they are
not solely focused on eradicating symptoms but on finding purpose for life. Consequently,
service models that are built on user needs can speak to how people understand suffering and
how they might warrant suitable care, as opposed to merely arising from diagnostic tests and
medication. Similarly, a capabilities model defines worth in health by the things people can
accomplish and achieve, not the disease markers. It thus evolves from a direct access to
immediate services that dramatically save failed biology to developing capacities for thriving by
using communal preventive capacities. Integrated care also recognizes that such multiple health
problems are not solved by seeking medical cures but does call for coordinated responses from
multiple fragmented specialist compartments to support self-management. Here the focus rightly
moves away from reactive stances waiting for emergent situations that can be solved by technical
solutions onto continuous effective partnership with the goal of promoting well-being and which
addresses the user where he/she is. It is notable that within mainstream provision, outcome
measures are progressively incorporating patient values such as their quality of life, alongside
traditional healthcare measures like disease recovery rates; patient activation measures similarly
assess patient’s enablement and effectiveness. Thus, positivist concepts that define quality health
care as the elimination of pathophysiology are replaced by the concept of care as acknowledging
and supporting people in changed health states in supportive talk with services. It becomes clear
that the cured/caring split cannot hold because even the curative actions require caring and social
interaction to realize a health beyond biological symmetry. In the long run, healthcare
frameworks that are oriented to the value of people as opposed to the management of disease can
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mobilize beyond such dichotomies, rethink methods of enhancing well-being and human
capabilities beyond the biomedical techno-heroic model.
