Care of Disabled

A disability or handicap is a physical, mental, or emotional disability that severely limits a person's ability to manage the tasks involved in his or her daily life. Some people may have single or multiple handicaps that exist in a certain percentage of every country's general population.

The handicapped have historically been regarded with fear and suspicion, often shut away in back rooms or, more recently, committed to institutions for what may amount to little more than custodial care. In many states disabled persons, particularly the mentally retarded and the mentally ill, are denied legal rights such as the right to marry. Illegal sterilizations have routinely been performed on the handicapped in some institutions. In addition to the problem of the disabled itself, the individual often faces the problem of being cut off from the mainstream of the society and relegated to the status of a non person. The stigma attached to the handicapped prevents recognition of the person's assets. The concept of the exceptional child helps do away with some of the semantic connotations of labels and diagnoses by acknowledging that a handicap may be only one aspect of a person's physical or mental make-up and that despite such disability he or she is entitled to legal as well as fundamental human rights.

Physicians throughout history have practiced to a greater or lesser extent the so-called RAHABILITATION MEDICINE which is a medical specialty that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of neuromusculo-skeletal disorders and the restoration of the physically disabled to their highest possible levels of physical, psychological, social, vocational, and economic fnctions.