Well this is my first blog on this lovely website, so if it is not as "articulate" as you would like please forgive me. As many of you know my name is Rak Mehta I am currently a graduate student pursuing a masters degree in Rehabilitation Counseling. As I was reading through the multiple blogger posts on this website I noticed that there has been very little said about "stigma" and how it impacts disability. As we go about our daily lives we are surrounded by negative images, media representations of persons with disability and thoughts/beliefs others may pose towards individuals with disabilities, although we cannot change what others believe, it is important to change the way they act towards the disabled population. Every hour of the school day a kid is getting bullied at school because he identifies with a particular minority group(homosexuality, disabled, African American). These actions not only cause psychological distress, but may lead to the child harming himself or others. It is time we take a stand to Bullying and the stigmatizing views of society. I have decided to create this blog to raise awareness of Disability. The single biggest difference between this blog and the others is that we will not mention the negative aspects of Disability as much as the positives. In other words it is my belief that the best way to reduce stigma is to capture the essence of Disability that is it is just a label attached on to a person, but it does not define an individual. Let's take a person with Down Syndrome for instance, it is true that the Individual will not be able to do some things due to his/her physique, however instead of focusing on the "label" of Down syndrome we should focus on the positives perhaps this individual is a writer, a powerful speaker maybe even a die hard video game fanatic or a great swimmer. By focusing on these qualities we are broadening our horizon and removing the preconcieved idea of Disability replacing it with what it means to be a human being.
This blog will not only feature stories by me(mostly educating parents), but I want to gear it towards you the readers. Each week I want to feature at least one success story, a story about your child's strengths, accomplishments and where he/she is currently in life. As mentioned above the best way to end the stigma is not to expose "what is stigma", but to explain why Stigmatizing people with disabilities is not necessary that is they are human beings!
The second purpose of this blog is to educate parents not only on Disability, but on ways your child can succeed in life. I always tell people there are two types of parents A) those who sit back, relax and wait for the system to tell them that their child cannot succeed, these parents tend to "give up" and lose all hope in their child being successful vocationally, intellectually and socially. These parents are the ones who tend to believe the "stigma". On the other hand there are another group of parents who do challenge the system, who do believe their children can be successful. These parents look at the system as a "means', but not an end to reach their goals. As one might have guessed these folks are more likely to have kids who go to college and succeed in reaching their god given potential as opposed to the Type A folks. You(the parents) are what can make or break your child. We hear it all the time how social support makes a difference. Throughout this blog I am not going to just "tell" you how it makes a difference, I am going to show you!
Hope you enjoyed this introductory blog. You can follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/MoebiusChicago
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