Becoming Disabled

A person without a disability may recognize someone using a wheelchair, a guide dog or a prosthetic limb, or someone with Down syndrome, but most don’t conceptualize these people as having a shared social identity and a political status. “They” merely seem to be people to whom something unfortunate has happened, for whom something has gone terribly wrong. The one thing most people do know about being disabled is that they don’t want to be that.

Source/more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/opinion/sunday/becoming-disabled.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1

It's all in their heads

"A concussion is more a mild form of traumatic brain injury in which the brain is exposed to abnormal forces that result in transient neurological dysfunction," Ellis says. "But ‘mild traumatic brain injury’ is a bit of a misnomer."

Source/more:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/health/its-all-in-their-heads-390878351.html

Chronic Pain Can Cause Long-Lasting Damage To Your Brain

Chronic pain can damage and change your brain. If you live with chronic pain, you will know how devastating and wide-ranging the effects can be on your mental processing speed, your mood, and your memory.

Source/more:

http://www.lifehack.org/450898/chronic-pain-can-cause-long-lasting-damage-to-your-brain

Ontario to Introduce New Measures to Protect Patient Privacy

The province intends to introduce amendments to the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) that, if passed, would strengthen privacy rules, make it easier to prosecute offences and increase fines.

MORE:

http://news.ontario.ca/mohltc/en/2015/06/ontario-to-introduce-new-measures-to-protect-patient-privacy.html

Thomas Ungar: The health care payment game is rigged

In health care we have a similar unfair structural divide — the advantage of procedural care over cognitive care. This divide supports an inequity that is out of keeping with population health needs and the major causes of disability that keep people out of the workforce and impact to our GDP. It’s out of keeping with value.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/thomas-ungar-the-health-care-payment-game-is-rigged