This view must be examined as it has damaging and lasting effects on people who live with disability and chronic conditions. And, many people with disabilities have unfortunately learned to be passive, if not completely disengaged, where questions of their own health and well being are concerned. Many see health as just one more thing beyond their control, something they cannot change or influence. The ability to practice healthy behaviors, even in the presence of disability, has led to newer models of health. These newer definitions view health as multi-dimensional and see optimal health as defined within a given person s unique circumstances.
Health is viewed as the maximizing of one s potential along various dimensions.
Health includes a dynamic balance of physical, social, emotional, spiritual and intellectual factors. When health is viewed not as the absence of disability or chronic conditions, but as the ability to function effectively in given environments, to fulfill needs and to adapt to major stresses, then, by definition, most people with disabilities are healthy. Peg Nosek, Director, Center for Research on Women with Disabilities and Professor Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Baylor College of Medicine, writes, that the stereotype of infirmity, sick people in wheelchairs covered with blankets, haunts people with disabilities. Even in those situations where people are experiencing poor health, chronic fatigue or pain, they don t want to be asked how they feel all the time. Health care providers, like many others, are not free of the common disability stereotypes which cause discrimination and environmental and attitudinal barriers that people with disabilities encounter daily.