Gardner S: The Handicapped and Society

Question: Handicapped people are often looked down upon, what are some ways that people in the community and in the medical community can improve awareness towards people with handicaps?

In my trip to Boston with my JUA group, I was thinking of my essential question the entire time, but I could not find a real answer to it, even after visiting the OT/PT lady, and the Body Worlds exhibit. Although they told us all about what they did and how to get there, that did not help me solve my question. I then turned to myself and asked how I, as a person with a handicap, could work with people to increase awareness about my condition, and others which affect the lives of millions. My answer was simple: Get out there and do something. Even if you do something only within your community, such as organizing a special needs groups where people with mental handicaps can have fun and be taken care of, or just a group where people come to mentor young people with handicaps, you are helping increase awareness.
In my two years on the mountain biking team, Coach Elkin has always reinforced the motto: “Begin Within”; I believe that this has to do with everything in life, not just mountain biking. Increasing awareness about people with handicaps has to begin with handicapped people, showing them that they are not the only ones. Many handicapped people at one point or another believe they are the only ones that have their condition, and often feel depressed and lonely. They have to take the initiative to search for other people like them and KNOW they are not alone.

Because of their conditions they might not get out of the house a lot, which is a factor that does not help increase awareness, along with what I said in the first paragraph, people have to get out of the house and do something. If that person simply goes to a basketball game and helps the team out in some way, they are increasing awareness through showing other people that they are capable, and not “cripple”. Many people simply do not understand the conditions that these people suffer from and are therefore afraid or unwilling to get to know the people with these conditions. If people do not ask about these conditions they will never know or truly understand.

As far as the medical side goes, a lot can be done, a lot of it just takes initiative of large groups of people. The individual needs to take initiative and petition and fundraise to increase awareness within the medical world, because many people are mostly focused on the large or more common handicaps. There needs to be more awareness within the medical world about the small or uncommon for something to be done about them. An advertising campaign in the Paralympics or the Special Olympics can increase awareness about other disabilities to people already active in the community. It ties back to the individual having increased awareness because as soon as there is a fundraising or charity campaign towards it, they may become interested in it, and therefore try to do something about it, which creates a positive cycle of increased awareness.

The same can happen but in a negative manner, and this obviously works against the purpose of this entire essay. If a person really believes that handicapped people cannot do anything, his ideas may be spread to other people, and this is the total opposite of the truth. In the end, it’s all comes down to the handicapped person himself/herself. If he or she does not ‘go out into the spotlight’ people will never truly understand.