Cripping rehabilitation: A disability justice approach to research and practice.
No study was conducted and no outcome was measured.
This is a theoretical paper arguing that rehabilitation psychology should examine its own assumptions about disability, cure, and who counts as an expert. It offers questions to sit with, not evidence to act on.
What this paper is
This is a theoretical position paper proposing a 'disability justice' framework for rehabilitation psychology. It reviews existing models of disability (moral, medical, social, minority, political/relational), discusses language choices (person-first versus identity-first), and offers recommendations for how clinicians and researchers might examine their assumptions about disability, structural barriers, and patient-centred care. It reports no patients, no intervention, no outcomes, and no data of any kind. There is no finding here to change your practice on; the paper's value is in the questions it raises about assumptions and framing, not in evidence for any specific treatment or approach.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the practical suggestions in this paper — such as using the ADDRESSING framework, asking patients about their own goals rather than projecting expectations, or compensating community advisors — as evidence-based clinical guidelines. They are theoretical recommendations from a position paper with no supporting data, no participants, and no outcome measures. They may be reasonable things to do, but this paper does not demonstrate that they work.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →