The Mentally and Physically Handicapped: A Community Responsibility...

Introduction


During the Nazi rule, the physically and mentally handicapped were set aside for mercy killing. In 1939, Hitler himself passed a degree requiring physicians to carry out mercy killing of patients considered incurable. Today, the new Nazi are those neglectful of the vulnerable persons or suffocate progress of human life.

Moving around rural and slum areas, the physically and mentally handicapped are tied up on ropes for fear of being raped or stoned to death, kept in the backyard -for being "not presentable" and "frightening" to visitors, or treated like convicted prisoners -whose activities would be limited to receiving food.

But they are human beings and entitled to dignifying treatment. They, for example, deserve access and/or right to medical attention, to learning opportunities, to movement (play and exercise), to employment, to appropriate technology (that considers their vulnerability), to recreational facilities right to a healthy environment and to participate in development of their countries.

In helping integrate them into society different technological designs would be developed to help integrate handicapped persons with learning opportunities to be responsibile to the self, self-sufficient and at some stage; be socially responsible citizens.

Here life skills -involvement self-understanding, dealing with stigma, self-management training, training in social skills, communication, negotiation, goal setting, health science basics and livelihood issues too could be integrated.

They could indeed have a life to live and a passion for life, though the community in which they live, must care and support them as fundamental contribution and community responsibility. We could all feel obliged to help these people -through not just giving, but also developing them to self-sufficiency.

Unfortunately, a big section lives in the most poor category -both financially and intellectually. Some communities, besides, hardly find a dollar a day to live on, they could luck both hope and plan for the vulnerable dependents as well. Instead, they would be locked up in the backyard as “useless.”

For poor families, they would not have necessary care from their care-givers -as out and about they would be moving and working in farm-lands to make ends meet. So neglect of the disabled people could be due to a wider problem as poverty.

But, also, there is a category of the elderly -who at the same time acting as care-givers. There could be sadness in such a home -as they are both vulnerable. At "worst," the physically handicapped need lifting up and down -which adds on the misery. It would be at this point that community support would mean a lot to the lives of the disabled people.

There must be not only a policy that protects and supports emancipation of the vulnerable people as well as social and economic structures that put them (vulnerable people) into transformation processes.

That could be show of love, care and support by communities, supporting developmental paths of the vulnerable through institutional and social structural accommodation. We would need also to be appreciative of them as people we have to live and develop with.

Problem

Vulnerable people (the physically and mentally handicapped -MPH) are so often neglected first by their families and later communities. They are considered useless to society and their potential hardly explored. So they are made to be and remain destitute within their own communities -as though permanent sentence to misery and subsequent extinction.

Even the few local non-government organizations, whose charter would be to emancipate them, hardly do so either because they lack capacity or just part of the neglectful society in as far as supporting the mentally and physically handicapped is concerned.

Justification

The vulnerable people have faced a cruel face of the community through neglect and absence of intervention mechanism to make them productive and be able to contribute to the development of their communities. Yet the real community sense would be to identify vulnerable people as credible to society, whose voices must be heard and equally have access to developmental opportunities.

Goal

Provide a more meaningful and dignifying treatment to the vulnerable groups as people who deserve a good life to live, demonstrate productivity sense and participate in community development -with community sense of support and recognition. Click here to read more...