2007 PhD Thesis Final Revised.pdf - Curtin University

ability to define, discover, report, and measure the concept of disability (Coudroglou
& Poole, 1984). Others believed that a professional body such as the WHO should
have gone further in supporting professionals in the field and should have taken a
more proactive role in addressing the welfare of people with disabilities.
This criticism has resulted in the WHO keeping the definitions under constant
review. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the WHO definitions continued to undergo
minor changes. In recent times, however, these definitions have undergone a major
change. Several new drafts of the definitions, referred to as the ICIDH-2, were
created and trialled through the mid to late 1990s. The result was a change of focus,
finalised in 2001, and named the International Classification of Functioning,
Disability and Health (ICF). The aim of the new ICF classification was to
“…provide a unified and standard language and framework for the description of
health and health-related states" (International Classification of Functioning
Disability and Health, 2004, p3). The ICF indicated that in the past there were two
main health-related disability models: the social model and the medical model. The
social model was a combination of the charity and rights model where disability was
defined as a social problem. The medical model, as previously discussed, suggested
that a disability was a problem of the person (International Classification of
Functioning Disability and Health, 2004).
With the international health professions community accepting the ICF, the
WHO believed it had promulgated new definitions of disability effectively.
Disability could now be seen as a health issue affected by contextual factors.
Kostanjsek (2004, p2) has recently defined ‘disability’ as follows:
In the context of health, disability is an umbrella term for impairments,
activity limitations and participation restrictions. It denotes the negative
aspects of the interaction between an individual (with a health condition) and
that individual’s contextual factors (environmental and personal factors).
This definition endeavours to acknowledge the multi-dimensional nature of
disability. The other associated terms within the ICF include these critical
definitions: impairment is interpreted in relation to the functioning of body parts or
organs; activity is seen in relation to the capacity of a person to do basic or complex
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