Critical Health and Learning Disabilities: An Exploration of Erasure and Social Murder(Critical Approaches to Health)

This empirically grounded book presents a critical, interdisciplinary perspective on social and cultural issues related to the health and wellbeing of people with learning disabilities. Through an exploration of healthcare, love and intimacy, pregnancy and childbirth, housing, employment and food the book highlights the enduringly impoverished lives and premature deaths people labelled with learning disabilities experience globally and suggests that such structural violence amounts to social murder. Through the lens of critical disability studies, the book links the debates around learning disabilities to the larger framework of deinstitutionalisation. It takes a closer look at the label “learning disability”, which remains associated with stigma and shame, and advances comprehension of how and why it is that the lives of this group of people are systematically constrained and shortened. The book further identifies recommendations that can be utilised for challenging and changing these circumstances. It is essential reading for those involved in social and cultural issues related to the lives of people with learning disabilities, and also beneficial for advanced students in sociology, anthropology, psychology, allied health sciences and other related disciplines. It will also be valuable for researchers and health and social care professionals seeking critical insights about their work.

Table of Contents:
Series editor preface. Chapter 1. ‘As natural as the air around us’; the social murder of people labelled with learning disabilities. Chapter 2. Accessing healthcare. Chapter 3. Love and relationships. Chapter 4. Home life, housing, community and employment. Chapter 5. Food and eating. References.

About the Author :
Sara Ryan is a Professor of Social Care at the Manchester Metropolitan University. Her main research interests are experiences of exclusion and marginalisation, particularly in relation to learning disabilities and autism, and strategies of resistance, activism and advocacy.

Review :
“When I say that the first chapter is called, ‘As natural as the air around us’; the social murder of people labelled with learning disabilities, you begin to understand the necessary violence of this book. The book punctures all our various excuses and complicit and ineffective endeavours that have failed to bring about change. It’s urgent and passionate and above all utterly human – a quality which should go without saying but, as the book so forensically exposes, seems to need saying again. Everything gets ‘turned over’ in this book, things get called out - theory, eugenics, ableism, health and care systems, governments, academia, charities. There is an unassailable and deeply uncomfortable and provocative argument at the core of this book about a State-sanctioned and State-actioned refusal to see learning disabled people as ‘proper people’ at all. People being denied citizenship, denied life, denied love. Systematically, casually, deliberately. It made me want to cry tears of anger and deep, deep sadness, see my own part in it all and then get on with trying to be a useful ally. That the book is so badly needed is a terrible indictment. The question it leaves me with is, what now? It cannot be more of the same.” Professor David Abbott, Chair in Social Policy, University of Bristol “This compelling book lays bare the stark reality of how the humanity of people with learning disabilities is so often denied. By centering the concept of 'social murder,' the book reveals the conditions that lead to diminished lives and deaths, which remain disturbingly ignored by both wider society and those in power. Sara carefully guides readers through this frightening and incomprehensible landscape, posing critical questions about why so many scholars, policy makers and systems continue to overlook the lives of people with learning disabilities. This is an important read for all those committed to exposing the structural violence at play in the lives of people with learning disabilities.” Professor Katherine Runswick-Cole, Chair in Education, University of Sheffield “In this hard-hitting book, Professor Ryan uses exceptionally wide research to lay bare the scandalous way we treat people with learning disabilities - as people less deserving of respect, health, wealth or even life. It is a must read for people who care about human rights, as a prelude to changing this scandal.” Jan Walmsley, Visiting Professor of the History of Learning Disabilities, The Open University