Understanding of Disability Perspectives From Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation

Disability is an umbrella term, covering impairment, activity limitation, and participation restrictions, which should be explained based on the biopsychosocial model. Therefore, to plan the most suitable rehabilitation program for individuals with disability, the rehabilitation team members should understand all its aspects.

   About 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability, of whom 2-4% experience significant difficulties in functioning. The global disability prevalence is higher than the WHO’s previous estimates, which dates from the 1970s and suggests a figure of around 10%. In Turkey, the global disability prevalence was 12.29% in 2002 and 16.2% for 2016. This shows us many people with a disability need to engage in a rehabilitation program so as to improve their quality of life. To attain this, rehabilitation team members, including physiotherapists, ergotherapists, physians, rehabilitation nurses, orthotics and prosthetics, social workers, dieticians, speech therapists work together interdisciplinary. Since disability is complex, dynamic, multidimensional, and contested, all health sciences undergraduate students should be trained in this subject. 

   Through studying this book entitled “Understanding Disability- perspectives from physiotherapy and rehabilitation”, both students and graduated health professionals would be able to describe all aspects of disability and establish their own perspective. Most importantly, they would learn how to evaluate a person, who has a disability, and how to plan an effective rehabilitation program based on contemporary perspectives.

   My associate editor, Beliz Belgen Kaygısız, and I would like to thank all chapters’ writers for their meaningful contributions to this book and for their efforts on this matter.

Prof. Uğur Cavlak, PT, Ph.D.