Handbook Of Severe Disability

Chapter include: comprehensive rehabilitation: evaluation & treatment; psychosocial adjustment to chronic disease & disability; significant body systems; disability consequences of bed rest; spinal cord injury; neuromuscular diseases; peripheral neuropathies; multiple sclerosis; stroke & cerebral trauma: cerebral palsy; epilepsy; amputation; rheumatic diseases; organic musculoskeletal back disorders; chronic pain; alcoholism; drug abuse; mental illness; mental retardation; sexual adjustment to chronic disease & disability; cardiovascular diseases; pulmonary dysfunction; diabetes mellitus; end-stage renal disease; hemophilia; sickle cell disease; cancers; blindness & visual impairments; hearing impairments & deafness; burn; plastic & reconstructive surgery.

This authoritative handbook reviews the breadth of current knowledge about developmental disabilities: neuroscientific and genetic foundations; the impact on health, learning, and behavior; and effective educational and clinical practices. Leading authorities analyze what works in intervening with diverse children and families, from infancy through the school years and the transition to adulthood. Chapters present established and emerging approaches to promoting communication and language abilities, academic skills, positive social relationships, and vocational and independent living skills. Current practices in positive behavior support are discussed, as are strategies for supporting family adaptation and resilience.

This handbook questions, debates and subverts commonly held assumptions about disability and citizenship in the global postcolonial context. Discourses of citizenship and human rights, so elemental to strategies for addressing disability-based inequality in wealthier nations, have vastly different ramifications in societies of the Global South, where resources for development are limited, democratic processes may be uncertain, and access to education, health, transport and other key services cannot be taken for granted. In a broad range of areas relevant to disability equity and transformation, an eclectic group of contributors critically consider whether, when and how citizenship may be used as a lever of change in circumstances far removed from UN boardrooms in New York or Geneva. Debate is polyvocal, with voices from the South engaging with those from the North, disabled people with nondisabled, and activists and politicians intersecting with researchers and theoreticians. Along the way, accepted wisdoms on a host of issues in disability and international development are enriched and problematized. The volume explores what life for disabled people in low and middle income countries tells us about subjects such as identity and intersectionality, labour and the global market, family life and intimate relationships, migration, climate change, access to the digital world, participation in sport and the performing arts, and much else.