Introduction

The social model of disability has been criticised for adopting a medicalised view of mental distress and for failing to take account of people's lived experience of mental health problems (Plumb, 1994). In addition, insights from the mental health survivor movement have largely been overlooked by academic writing in the field of disability studies (Beresford, 2000). This omission may result from the fact that structural disablism – with its emphasis on barriers to activity – is perceived to have limited relevance for those experiencing mental distress or ‘mental illness’ (I will use the term ‘mental distress’ throughout this chapter). It will be argued that psycho-emotional disablism (Thomas, 2007), by contrast, is a much more common form of disablism in the lives of people who experience mental distress, often in the form of negative attitudes, prejudice and internalised oppression. One consequence of psycho-emotional disablism is that it can lead to increased levels of anxiety and stress which, in turn, increase the level of mental distress the person is experiencing.

This chapter will discuss psycho-emotional disablism and consider its applicability to people experiencing mental distress, arguing that this concept has particular relevance here, because of the focus on barriers to being rather than restrictions on activity (Thomas, 2007). In particular, this chapter will explore the ramifications of framing mental distress as arising from an interaction between the psyche and society rather than from a pre-existing impairment, distinct from the experience of disablism. If disablism ‘constitutes the very thing that is deemed the illness itself’ (Spandler, 2012, 15, emphasis in original), then the experience of mental distress has important implications for ongoing theoretical debates within disability studies about the complex, blurred relationship(s) between disablism and impairment. In short, this chapter teases out the connections between the concepts of mental distress, disablism and impairment and considers how they are mediated by structural disablism, psycho-emotional disablism, and the psycho-emotional effects of impairment.

The extended social relational definition of disablism

The social model of disability has done much to improve the lives of disabled people through identifying and challenging the economic, cultural, social and environmental barriers which exclude people with impairments from mainstream society.