Constructing Disability Identity and the Disability Experience- this paper is not perfect but it was 2 pages and met the requirements of the syllabus

Lissette Hall

DHD 401- Fall 2010

Ryan Parrey; Vandana Chaudhry

Response Paper #6

Constructing Disability Identity and the Disability Experience

It seems to be a consistent theme from British academic journalists to make use of Foucauldian and Marxist ideologies as a platform from which constructs of disability identity, experience, community, or culture might employ as they manifest. Interestingly, in “Negotiating Psycho-emotional Dimensions of Disability and their Influence on Identity Constructions” Donna Reeve describes disability identity as “fluid” because “it better represents the diversity of the disability experiences of disabled people than an essentialist disability identity” (493). This observation is contrary actually to what Reeve has to say about the use of Foucault in the disability dialectic calling its use scarce. Another relevant theme present in this week and last week’s readings are that different perceptions of the social model of disability, which I find interesting to have been termed in the UK in the 1980s, are the locus of the proverbial disability debates.

Reeve goes on to reference Carol Thomas’ proposition of “an extended social relational understanding of disability” that includes “structural and psycho-emotional dimensions of disability.” She clarifies how psycho-emotional dimensions of disability are a “form of disablism [that] undermines the emotional well-being of disable people and can be just as disabling as structural barriers.” (493)

Structural barriers are easily recognizable— sidewalks without curbs, for example— unlike psycho-emotional dimensions of disability. Despite all of the interesting material for these final weeks, a point in time which we (as students in this course) should have formed at least a skeletal concepts of identity, community, and culture as related to disability, I am most fascinated with the concept of psycho-emotional dimensions of disability undermining the emotional status of individuals with disabilities and how they can be just as disabling as physical, environmental, tangible, thus structural barriers. In the same theoretical space in which the dissimilarities often initially perceived between cognitive disabilities and physical disabilities lies must also be the parallel on which the demarcation between how individuals with physical disabilities interact with structural barriers and how this both esoteric but field specific term of psycho-emotional dimensions of disability, limited in the context of this paper to cognitive or neurological disabilities.

The example I shall employ to explore this relationship involves elevators. Elevators are physical mechanisms that are solutions to the structural barrier of individuals in wheelchairs, for example, to traverse levels in buildings. On the contrary, a psycho-emotional dimension of disability that a person with a cognitive disorder might experience could include increased anxiety when in elevators with other people: anxiety resultant from sharing space, albeit typically small, with others. An elevator can be both a solution and, in the psycho-emotional realm, a problem. It is both part of a solution to the social model of disability, to which the structural barrier solution is relevant, and, in the given example, a problem for the individual with the cognitive disability. Please note that, in order to reduce the variables in the comparison, this example does not consider the use of stairs as an alternative option at this time because the student with the cognitive disability may be being escorted to a study/exam room, a requirement of being thusly accommodated.

As such I believe that molding a disability culture composed of allies and individuals with varied disability identities, as members of the disability community, we must also consider how solutions and accommodations can sometimes also create the need for further solutions and be prepared to address them in a comprehensive context of the universe of disability experience. Perhaps Reeve was correct in her choice to explore how Foucault’s ideologies of power, knowledge, and subjectivity and how, as a disability community, seek solutions for the effects of these different constructs’ relationships on how an individual with an impairment may be impacted. In order to manifest comprehensive solutions to integrate the disability experience into mainstream experience, a variety of dimensions must be considered because of the abstract nature of the psycho-emotional dimensional response, for example.

It's all about NKM2.ORG

Check it out on facebook and the actual website.

Joey Pantoliano and crew are truly turning mental health advocacy into activism, as I write, over in Iraq. He's amazing; the group's amazing; there's so much work to be done!

Medically speaking (inside flatmate roast), more posts in between papers, Chemistry, and Russian History!

cheers,

~L~

Groups that have yet to exist at UIC but will before I leave...(1.) No Kidding?! Me Too!; (2.) Activeminds.org- UIC Chapter; (3.) SSDP (Students for a Sensible Drug Policy)- UIC Chapter

...what's a pre-med activist to do in spare time, but this!

$4.8M Grant to Develop New Treatments for Depression

Release Date:
August 18, 2009
Media Contact: Sam Hostettler, (312) 355-2522, samhos@uic.edu

$4.8M Grant to Develop New Treatments for Depression

The University of Illinois at Chicago has received a five-year, $4.8 million federal grant to develop new therapeutics to treat depression.

Depression, a serious medical illness involving the brain, affects more than 20 million people in the United States, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Symptoms can include sadness, loss of interest in activities that were once enjoyed, weight change, difficulty in sleeping (or oversleeping), loss of energy, feelings of worthlessness and thoughts of death or suicide.

The illness can run in families, and it occurs more often in women than men. The most common treatment option is the combination of antidepressant medication and psychotherapy. Other treatments include lifestyle, behavioral and thought modifications, and alternative and complimentary medicines.

What's needed are antidepressants that work faster, have fewer side effects and that act pharmacologically in new ways, says Alan Kozikowski, UIC professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacogonosy and the grant's principal investigator.

Kozikowski and his research team had been designing and synthesizing novel nicotine-like compounds that target certain receptors in the brain, in hopes that they would improve cognition in Alzheimer's disease. Studies in animal models revealed that some of these compounds had antidepressant activity.

"We thus chose to focus our program on depression, as this offered
a very different target that might lead to something better, with a faster onset of action," Kozikowski said.

While the main focus of the research now is to develop medications for depression, Kozikowski said it's likely some candidate compounds may have other clinical applications, including the treatment of schizophrenia, pain and nicotine dependence.

In fact, the UIC drug discovery group -- which also includes investigators from the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix and from PsychoGenics Inc. in Tarrytown, N.Y. -- has already found that some of these novel agents do work for pain in animal models.

Prior research has also shown that many smokers smoke to improve their mood, supporting the notion that nicotine itself has antidepressant properties. This would explain, Kozikowski said, why cigarette smoking is much more common among depressed individuals. A recent study found that smokers are 41 percent more likely than nonsmokers to suffer from depression.

Such studies suggest that nicotinic compounds that have been modified to reduce their addictive potential while retaining the ability to balance mood could provide a new family of antidepressant drugs, he said.

This new drug class could have greater efficacy and fewer side effects than antidepressant medications currently on the market that work by inhibiting monoamine reuptake, Kozikowski said. Side effects of current antidepressants include headache, nausea, insomnia, dry mouth, constipation and agitation.

In spite of the intensive efforts that have gone into the design and study of nicotinic drugs, very few of the compounds have reached clinical trials, Kozikowski said.

The new grant is part of the National Cooperative for Drug Discovery and Development Groups and is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, one of the National Institutes of Health.

Kozikowski's coworkers include Rong He, research assistant professor at UIC; Andrew Mesecar, professor in the UIC Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology; Jianhua Liu, postdoctoral research associate at UIC; Ron Lukas, of the Barrow Neurological Institute; and Barbara Caldarone of PsychoGenics Inc.

For more information about UIC, visit www.uic.edu
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