Weber: AAPL Guideline for Forensic Evaluation of Psychiatric 
Disabilities: A Disability Law Perspective.

Contemporary disability law takes into account the insight that 
physical and mental conditions need not be disabling but for the 
environmental and attitudinal barriers that keep people with 
disabilities from social participation on a plane of equality with 
others. The need to use a wheelchair does not disable except for 
curbs and stairs, and many mental conditions do not disable except 
for social attitudes. The "AAPL Guideline for Forensic Evaluation of 
Psychiatric Disabilities" is a refreshing departure from writings 
that approach disability from a perspective that focuses on nothing 
but medical considerations and the study of how individuals are 
defective compared with established norms. The Guideline stresses the 
process of examination and list important legal considerations for 
examiners to apply. But the Guideline does not show any awareness of 
a model of disability other than a medical one that classifies 
individuals by defect. Psychiatrists would do well to consider the 
role of social barriers when using the Guideline in making 
disability-related examinations.


http://www.jaapl.org/cgi/content/abstract/36/4/558



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