The Social Construction of Disability

Counselling and disability have for a long time been inextricably linked. Research shows that most persons with an acquired disability feel that they would have benefitted greatly from counselling support in the wake of the onset of their impairment. However, studies also show that persons with disability form a particular client group which can sometimes be avoided by counsellors. Reasons for this avoidance might stem from the fact that counsellors often feel that they are not adequately trained to offer counselling services to this particular client group; and that most counsellors perceive working with clients with disability as a specialist area to work in.  

A few years ago I carried out a study with the aim of understanding how Maltese counsellors construct disability. The participants for this study were 6 Maltese counsellors who used different approaches to counselling and worked in different sectors. Their years of practice ranged between 25 years to 2 years of experience. The findings of this research indicate that the social construction of disability among Maltese counsellors is influenced by three main forces. The combination of these three forces creates a certain tension which has led the counsellors to make contradictory claims about disability. The three main forces are: the international and national politics of disability, the Maltese social and cultural aspect, and the counsellors’ professional training and cultures of practice. 

The participants had great difficulty with explaining their understanding of disability. They made contradictory statements between claims about disability not being inherent to the individual, and, at the same time, claiming that it is the individual’s responsibility to overcome the limitations brought on by the disability. The participants also made an explicit distinction between ‘deserving’ persons with disability and ‘undeserving’ persons with disability, by giving various examples of the distinction between the two groups. The participants claimed that there were those persons with disability who were deserving of support and empowerment and those persons with disability who were undeserving of help and support because of their own feelings of anger towards their own situation and become of their own sense of  ‘self-righteousness’. In addition, the study also showed how the social construction of disability is influenced by the counsellors’ professional training and cultures of practice, which gave rise to further contradictory discourse.

Notwithstanding all the contradictions in the counsellors’ narratives, all the counsellors claimed that they would have liked to receive more training about disability issues. In addition, this study also indicates a great need for counselling approaches which would have the social model of disability as their foundation and which would help disabled people become more empowered.

A peer reviewed article about this study has been published in the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling.