Epidemiology of Disability in Australia - Essay Example

Impairment: it is any loss or abnormality of a psychological, physiological, or anatomical structure or function

Disability: is a restricted or limited or inadequate capacity of a person to perform an activity that results from effects of the impairment (British Thoracic Society Standards of care committee) in a manner or within a domain that is taken as normal for a human being

Handicap: is a disadvantage of a specific person from performing normal daily living activities that arises as result of the person’s impairment or disability subject to age, sex, social and cultural factors.

Acute reaction: it is a personal immediate and serious reaction (Ackley et al) of employment distress in response to psychiatric or psychological traumatic scenarios.

Counseling: According to the scope of practice for rehabilitation counseling, development by the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor certification CCRCC counseling as a treatment intervention is defined as the application of cognitive-affective, behavioral and systemic counseling strategies that multicultural principles of human behavior

Anoxia: it’s a serious deficit of oxygen (American Psychiatric Association) for tissue aerobic respiration that can result in the death of cells especially brain cells

Mental stress: is a person’s non-specific response to either physical or psychological changes or stressful factors in their lives (Babor, 1992). The state of distress distorts a person’s ability to a sustained stressor of life and predisposes diagnosable psychiatric or psychological disorders (Ackley et al, n.d.).

Psychiatry: is a discipline in medicine that is concerned with the causes, treatment, and prevention of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders

Psychology: is a discipline that is concerned with studies of functions of the mind in relation to the brains response to the social and physical environment

There is no common method of classifying and defining disability (Barlow, 2001). This is because:

1. Older people can develop a chronic illness that can predispose disability
2. There is a lack of organization of disability concepts