Shifting the discourse on disability: Moving to an inclusive, intersectional focus

Will psychology ever 'join hands' with disability studies? Opportunities and challenges in working towards structurally competent and disability-affirmative psychotherapy for energy limiting conditions

Despite sustained efforts among critically informed scholars to integrate thinking from disability studies into psychology, the psy disciplines continue to largely neglect the lived experience of disabled people and overlook disability as a form of social inequity and valued culture. In this article, I make a renewed case for integrating thinking from disability studies into psy, in particular within the psychotherapy professions and in the case of 'energy limiting conditions', a grass-roots concept that includes clinically and socially marginalised chronic illness such as Long COVID. Drawing on my experience as a disabled practitioner, and situating this within extant literature on disability and psy, I take an autoethnographic approach to exploring opportunities and challenges in bridging the interdisciplinary divide. I argue that unacknowledged institutional ableism within psy reproduces and is reinforced by physical and attitudinal barriers for disabled practitioners and service users, engendering under-representation of disability in psychotherapy professions and lacunae in disability-affirmative conceptual resources. Additionally, I propose that hermeneutical lacunae are bolstered by documented defensive clinical practices pertaining to disability. After discussing a wealth of opportunities for integration offered by disability studies, and noting the institutional failure within psy to embrace disability-related demographic and epistemic diversity, I question whether ongoing epistemic and social exclusions within the psy disciplines constitute a case of 'willful epistemic ableism'. Drawing on theorising vis-à-vis epistemic injustice and epistemologies of ignorance, I signal a form of systematic, actively maintained and structurally incentivised (motivated) non-knowing that results in collective failure among dominant groups to recognise established hermeneutical resources of the disabled community and allies. I conclude with suggestions of how this form of epistemic injustice might be mitigated.

A scoping review into the service needs of people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds living with disability to engage in meaningful occupations

INTRODUCTION

Although there is a large proportion of people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds within Australia, their rate of access to disability services is disproportionately low. This review aims to understand the service needs of people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds with disability to facilitate engagement in meaningful occupations.

METHODS

Arksey and O'Malley's scoping review framework was employed. Ten databases were searched for Australian studies. A deductive content analysis framework was applied in the synthesis.

RESULTS

Fourteen papers were included. Themes that emerged include language and cultural needs and considerations, which highlights the need for information sharing to take account of intergenerational, intercultural and sociolinguistic differences. It also identified the need for improved training and skills of existing interpreters. Culturally competent and responsive services was another theme identified, which emphasised the need to enhance the workforces' understanding of cultural practices. There is also a strong call for a more culturally diverse workforce to reduce the use of some interpreters and to build a more culturally competent workforce. The last theme was responsive service delivery, which requires the governance to support the development of a nurturing trusting therapeutic relationship.

CONCLUSIONS

Service providers should be trained on the inequities and intersectionality of this population. Further research is required to explore current disability policy in Australia with an intersectionality lens to ensure recommendations can be made to address barriers and ensure this population receives services in a manner that enhances their ability to engage in occupations meaningfully.