Defining Mental Disability Margaret Price Analysis

With “Defining Mental Disability”, Margaret Price explores the complications with bringing order to the titles and beliefs used to define the realm of disabilities considered mental. For one, there is the issue of what terms are appropriate to label mental disorders. Price points out the trouble that comes from singularly identifying a very diverse group of conditions, as well as the differences in connotations found from region to region (298-299). Then there is the problem of how to perceive mental ailments. Are they something to cure, or are they a natural extension of a person that should not be seen as an enfreakment of sorts? Price gives the following example, “While Fighting Autism viewed autism as a disease that must be battled and cures, Aspies for Freedom takes …show more content…
As Price highlights, those within the mentally disabled community sometimes view the word disabled with distrust, since it is seen by some as meaning a person cannot be “fixed”, which leads to the idea their individual rights being dependent on whether they agree to their psychiatrist’s course of treatment (301). Beyond the insight Price offers, there is the long-term history of how society has conceived disability. In his essay “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History”, Douglas C. Baynton points out, “When categories of citizenship were questioned, challenged, and disrupted, disability was called on to clarify and define who deserved, and who was deservedly excluded from citizenship” (17). This demonstrates that for Americans, setting aside someone as different and less than due to disability runs deep into its foundation, so much so that it excluded many of the disabled from becoming full citizens. While times have change, these types of stigmas do not fade quickly, adding to the distrust many feel when categorized as