Types of disability

Types of disability

Disability is caused by impairments to various subsystems of the body - these can be broadly sorted into the following categories.

Physical disability

Any impairment which limits the physical function of limbs or fine or gross motor ability is a physical disability. Other physical disabilities include impairments which limit other facets of daily living, such as severe sleep apnea. Handicap products are being used over to reduce this type of disability

Sensory disability

Sensory disabilities relate mainly to sight and hearing. The inability to smell or taste is relatively rarer and is not always considerered to be a disability. Other sensory impairments such as of the skin senses, the sensing of touch, heat, cold or pain also exist and are commonly associated with physical disabilities involving paralysis.

Visual impairment

Visual impairment (or vision impairment) is vision loss (of a person) to such a degree as to qualify as an additional support need through a significant limitation of visual capability resulting from either disease, trauma, or congenital or degenerative conditions that cannot be corrected by conventional means, such as refractive correction, medication, or surgery.[2][3][4] This functional loss of vision is typically defined to manifest with

1.            best corrected visual acuity of less than 20/60, or significant central field defect,

2.            significant peripheral field defect including homonymous or heteronymous bilateral visual, field defect or generalized contraction or constriction of field, or

3.            reduced peak contrast sensitivity with either of the above conditions.

Hearing impairment

Hearing impairment or hard of hearing or deafness refers to conditions in which individuals are fully or partially unable to detect or perceive at least some frequencies of sound which can typically be heard by most people. Mild hearing loss may sometimes not be considered a disability. Some Hearing aids are used to makes you hearing properly

Olfactory and gustatory impairment

Impairment of the sense of smell and taste are commonly associated with aging but can also occur in younger people due to a wide variety of causes.

There are a wide variety of olfactory disorders:

o   Anosmia – inability to smell

o   Dysosmia – things smell different than they should

o   Hyperosmia – an abnormally acute sense of smell.

o   Hyposmia – decreased ability to smell

o   Olfactory Reference Syndrome – psychological disorder which causes the patient to imagine he has strong body odor

o   Parosmia – things smell worse than they should

o   Phantosmia – "hallucinated smell," often unpleasant in nature

Complete loss of the sense of taste is known as ageusia, while dysgeusia is persistent abnormal sense of taste.

Somatosensory impairment

Insensitivity to stimuli such as touch, heat, cold, and pain are often an adjunct to a more general physical impairment involving neural pathways and is very commonly associated with paralysis (in which the motor neural circuits are also affected).

Balance disorder

A balance disorder is a disturbance that causes an individual to feel unsteady, for example when standing or walking. It may be accompanied by symptoms of being giddy, woozy, or have a sensation of movement, spinning, or floating. Balance is the result of several body systems working together. The eyes (visual system), ears (vestibular system) and the body's sense of where it is in space (proprioception) need to be intact. The brain, which compiles this information, needs to be functioning effectively.

Intellectual disability

Intellectual disability is a broad concept that ranges from mental retardation to cognitive deficits too mild or too specific (as in specific learning disability) to qualify as mental retardation. Intellectual disabilities may appear at any age. Mental retardation is a subtype of intellectual disability, and the term intellectual disability is now preferred by many advocates in most English-speaking countries as aeuphemism for mental retardation.

Mental health and emotional disabilities

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which are not a part of normal development or culture. The recognition and understanding of mental health conditions has changed over time and across cultures, and there are still variations in the definition, assessment, and classification of mental disorders, although standard guideline criteria are widely accepted.

Developmental disability

Developmental disability is any disability that results in problems with growth and development. Although the term is often used as a synonym or euphemism for intellectual disability, the term also encompasses many congenital medical conditions that have no mental or intellectual components, for example spina bifida.

Types of disability