Conceptualizing Disability

Abstract Historically, disability was equated with pathology. Eventually, this perspective evolved into a medical model, one that viewed disability or any chronic health condition as something to be “fixed” or “repaired,” so that disabled persons could become nondisabled. As disability rights efforts grew and health perspectives broadened, social models presented disability as a mode of being like any other rather than a pathological condition requiring intervention or the “norming” of disability. The World Health Organization offered the International Classification of Human Functioning (ICF) or “ICF Model” that is designed to understand the experience of disability by attending to the real and perceived environment, the nature of personal factors possessed by the individual, and the person’s particular health issues and needs. This dynamic model, which implicitly embraces positive psychological principles, allows practitioners and researchers to conceptualize disability in a variety of ways, including how a disabled person elects to navigate daily life (via activities and participation) to designing interventions aimed at improving disabled individuals’ health and well-being.