Changing the medical model of disability to the normalization model of disability: clarifying the past to create a new future direction

Abstract

The medical model of disability describes a widespread approach to disability common since the 1800s that views disabilities of all sorts as abnormalities that need to be cured or eradicated. Under the medical model of disability, medical care for disabled people has focused on making the bodies and brains of disabled people conform as closely as possible to society’s idea of a normal person. This emphasis on normalization was and continues to be extremely harmful to disabled people. In this paper, I propose retroactively changing the term medical model of disability to normalization model of disability to avoid conflation with useful medical care and to highlight normalization as the quintessential harm of the model.