Disability, impairment or illness? The relevance of the social model of disability to the study of mental disorder

Sociologists appear to have abandoned the study of serious mental illness. This paper argues that the work of the disability theorists provides new directions for an analysis of the plight of people suffering from serious mental illness. Disability theory, revolving around a ‘social approach to disability’, redirects analysis from the individual to processes of social oppression, discrimination and exclusion. The application of the ideas of disability theorists to the study of mental ill health will orient research and theoretical development towards an analysis of the complexity and multiplicity of the social restrictions faced by people diagnosed as ‘mentally ill’, and the social disadvantage and oppression they face. A number of vigorous debates within the disability theory literature are examined. One debate addresses the political and theoretical implications of identifying the differences that exist between people with disabilities. A second debate examines the relative importance of including an analysis of impairment in the social approach to disability. Finally, the paper discusses the critique of medical sociology, linking illness with disability, which is advanced by some disability theorists. This debate is particularly concerned with the linking of illness with disability and the ideological and conceptual disadvantages of a focus on illness